Best Practices for Reporting Location and Time Related Data

About this Document

This document was developed by the Northwest Environmental Data-Network (NED) and was approved for distribution by the NED Steering Committee. The data management interests of PNAMP have a strong relationship to those of NED, and there is overlap in participation and expertise. The document describes what the NED Steering Committee considers to be the minimum set of location and time information that should be used for collection and reporting. The best practices are not meant to limit the collection of additional information that may be pertinent to, and best determined by, the collecting organization.

PNAMP and NED would like to emphasize that these best practices have been prepared for users who are not presently tracking environmental project data within a geographic information system (GIS) and who are managing their information within a database or spreadsheet and/or for those using nonconforming metrics. For users who are already employing GIS systems and using spatial standards to track monitoring and restoration projects, it is strongly encouraged that they continue to do so and to track similar elements using established state and federal data and metadata (information about data) standards.

We realize that any change in standards requires effort and bears some cost; therefore, we would like to emphasize that adoption of consistent standards would result in reducing the burden of data integration and error checking. This document attempts to address this and move the region toward a more robust and functional methodology that will allow a higher level of data standardization.