Inventory and monitoring have long been a vital part of the biological program of the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) and have been used to inform local management actions. But the need to inform adaptation strategies at multiple geographic scales necessitates that information is easily accessible, standardized and managed in accordance with data standards of the federal government and the Department of the Interior. As part of the Natural Resource Program Center (NRPC), the Inventory and Monitoring initiative (I&M) assists local managers and staff on National Wildlife Refuges by providing standardized, peer-reviewed scientific protocols and data to evaluate the effects of management actions. I&M streamlines and enhances the Refuge System’s scientific capacity by ensuring that data and other information is readily available through the implementation of a centralized data management system, thus reducing redundancy in data collection and synthesis.
The Inventory and Monitoring Achievement Tracker (IMAT) database has been designed to help the National I&M office facilitate tracking of any I&M funded projects. The IMAT database can be used by regional and national I&M staff to identify common project activities occurring across the National Wildlife Refuge System. Through an ODBC connection, the IMAT database connects to ArcGIS10 to produce project status maps. These maps are produced on a quarterly basis and posted on SharePoint.
The information in IMAT is used by the National I&M Coordinator to produce status maps and statistics for the annual report.
