An Open Standard for Camera Trap Data

Camera traps that capture photos of animals are a valuable tool for monitoring biodiversity. The use of camera traps is rapidly increasing and there is an urgent need for standardization to facilitate data management, reporting and data sharing. Here we offer the Camera Trap Metadata Standard as an open data standard for storing and sharing camera trap data, developed by experts from a variety of organizations. The standard captures information necessary to share data between projects and offers a foundation for collecting the more detailed data needed for advanced analysis. The data standard captures information about study design, the type of camera used, and the location and species names for all detections in a standardized way. This information is critical for accurately assessing results from individual camera trapping projects and for combining data from multiple studies for meta-analysis. This data standard is an important step in aligning camera trapping surveys with best practices in data-intensive science. Ecology is moving rapidly into the realm of big data, and central data repositories are becoming a critical tool and are emerging for camera trap data. This data standard will help researchers standardize data terms, align past data to new repositories, and provide a framework for utilizing data across repositories and research projects to advance animal ecology and conservation.