All data in NatureCounts must be accompanied by comprehensive metadata, which describes when, where, how, and by whom the data were collected. The metadata are housed in the Bird Monitoring Data Registry (BMDR) format. Metadata helps data users understand and analyze a given dataset, and properly acknowledge the data source in any published work. Below is a sample of a metadata page for the North American Breeding Bird Survey.

Anyone hosting data on NatureCounts must submit metadata in the form of a completed metadata questionnaire. Anyone using data from NatureCounts must review the metadata for the datasets they are using.

Metadata for all datasets can be found on the Datasets page of the NatureCounts website.

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