NatureCounts strives to abide the FAIR principles of data management, ensuring that data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. To do this, all data in NatureCounts must be consistently formatted.

All NatureCounts data are formatted using a schema called the Bird Monitoring Data Exchange (BMDE), a standard set of data fields that capture all the variables of a bird observation. Because all datasets adhere to this format, they can be analyzed together in any application.

The BMDE is intended for sharing occurrence records, and doesn’t necessarily capture every aspect of a dataset. For complete data from projects that record more than bird occurrence (ie. bird banding data or nest monitoring data), you may need to consult the metadata and/or contact the data owner.

To learn more about the BMDE, visit the Bird Monitoring Data Exchange page of the NatureCounts website.  To see the fields that are included in the BMDE, visit the BMDE Fields page.

Next Section: Exploring the Metadata