III. DATA MANAGEMENT

Data management procedures for Survey and Manage salamander data forms remain to be fully developed. At this time, data forms and an electronic database is to be retained at the field offices conducting the surveys.

Data forms should be checked daily by the field crew leaders supervising surveys to ensure that there is a correct interpretation of the protocol, that data forms are completed accurately, and to address questions that may have arisen during surveys.

Data should be entered into an electronic database at the field offices. After data entry is completed, the database should be verified for accuracy, and backup copies made.

There is an existing known site database for Survey and Manage species. This database is intended to be updated as new known sites are recorded, but the procedure for this is not yet developed. As the data management system for known sites becomes operational, field offices will be contacted. The existing database was populated by historical survey data submitted to the Regional Ecosystem Office on a different data form (Appendix 6). The main elements required by the known site database have been included on the new data forms provided in this document. In particular, it should be realized that precise locations should be identified for known sites. For precision, UTM coordinates or latitude/longitude to the Second of accuracy should be recorded, in addition to marking the site on a topo-map. At finer scales of resolution, known sites are "polygons" rather than "dots", and this distinction can be made on site-maps as proposed project areas are surveyed and new sites delineated.