Abstract

Quality Control in a Crowd-Sourced Marine Mammal Observation Database
Track: Parks, Natural Reserves, Fisheries, and Wildlife Management
Authors: Rachel Guttmacher

The use of volunteered geographic information to collect marine mammal observations for a database invites data inconsistencies including duplicate points, incorrect identifications, and on-land sighting errors. The project created ArcGIS Python scripts to automate quality control flagging of duplicate and improbable points. This assures consistency in the analyses by marine biologists and other interested parties.