COMPLETE PROJECT SUBMISSION
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The last steps to complete are uploading the compressed acoustic files and other relevant project files, conducting QA/QC, adding notes on the project in the NABat Partner Portal, and notifying the Service of completed project submission:
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1. Go to the project in the portal and click the “Upload Acoustic Recordings” button towards the top. This will open the window for uploading acoustic files where you can select individual acoustic WAV files or tarball files. Check the size of the file and ensure that it does not exceed 3GB (Figure 6). It may be tempting to try and upload several tarball files in one go, but it’s best to only do one or two at a time to avoid file upload failure.
NOTE: While you are uploading files, it’s best to not work on anything else in the Partner Portal until the uploads are complete. Editing a project while an upload is occurring may cause edits to not successfully save.
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2. Once you’ve finished uploading the tarball files for a site, you can go to the “Acoustic Data” page and check if you are missing files (Figure 7).
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If there are missing files in any of your survey events, click the survey event name in the table (Figure 7) to go to that survey event’s page. Find the table under “Echolocation Measurements” and check “Unmatched Only” (Figure 8). If you manually vetted files as Noise that were auto-identified as bats, unless the auto-ID was EUMFLO, these files should be missing because they should have been excluded from the tarball files. If these are your only missing files, move on. If there are missing files that should be matched, and you are sure you included them in the uploaded tarball files, leave NABat alone for 10-30 minutes to finish processing the upload. If the files are still missing, you can either re-upload the full tarball, or just upload the individual missing files. Sometimes not all the files are ingested properly.
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3. Add final notes to the project within the Partner Portal.
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a) Notes about the deployments that were included during data processing in the Note field in the Kaleidoscope NABat metadata form are to be added to the “Comments” field within “Deployment Details” (Figure 9).
b) Notes specifically about processing are to be added to the “Processing Notes” field within “Echolocation Measurements” (Figure 9).
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4. Upload project photos, the project report, and any other relevant project files:
There is a tab within every survey event for “Images” where you will upload all deployment photos (Figure 10). These should be photos of set-up, potential roost trees, cavities, and any other relevant images to that survey event.
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Project files are uploaded into the “Project Files” tab found at the top of the project page (Figure 11). At minimum a PDF of the project report should be uploaded here. Any other files that are relevant to the project should also be uploaded here.
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5. If the project you are submitting is to fulfill consultation requirements, make sure all the above is completed for project submission (new project created, metadata uploaded, acoustic data uploaded, deployment and processing notes entered, data QA/QC completed, deployment images and report uploaded). Add the USFWS FBB Lead as a Project Leader with full access (Figure 12).
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6. Email the USFWS FBB Lead with the PDF report attached to the email and inform them that the project has been fully submitted. The USFWS FBB Lead will provide confirmation that the project has been submitted correctly and completely in two ways.
​The USFWS FBB Lead will reply to the email stating that “The USFWS Florida bonneted bat lead has reviewed this NABat project and has deemed data submission complete.” This sentence will also be added at the end of the project description in the project details page.
The consultation user’s affiliation will be changed to “Limited – Read Only” in all four Permissions categories (Cell Selection, Species List, Deployment, and Survey Permissions).
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7. After successfully completing all steps of the regulatory FBB data submission process, it is required that the applicant/consultant maintains a backup of the submitted project and its associated data for minimum one year following submission.
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Figure 6. Example of a project page in the NABat Partner Portal where you can find the “Upload Audio Recordings” button (highlighted in red box). This pops up the window in which you will select your file, check its file size to ensure it is less than 3GB, then submit.
Figure 7. The “Acoustic Data” page within a project, as indicated by the green arrow. The “Acoustic Data Summary” on this page is a table of the survey events within the project, where the user can see what quantity of files have been matched to a survey event and what quantity are missing.
Figure 8. Profile of a deployment within the NABat Partner Portal. Here the user can look at the deployment details and echolocation measurements. Red boxes and arrows indicate where to find unmatched acoustic files.
Figure 9. Profile of a deployment within the NABat Partner Portal. The user can access the “Comments” field within “Deployment Details” and the “Processing Notes” field within “Echolocation Measurements.” Red boxes and arrows indicate where to find these fields.
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Figure 10. Within each survey event is a tab for “Images” where photos from the survey event can be uploaded (tab indicated by red arrow and “Upload Deployment Images” button indicated by red box). Clicking this upload button will open the file upload window.
Figure 11. Within every project page there is a “Project Files” tab. In this tab there is an “Upload Project Files” button that will open the file upload window. Here the project report and any other relevant files should be uploaded.
Figure 12. Once project submission is complete, consultation users will need to go into the project members page and ensure that the USFWS FBB Lead is added as a Project Leader. Green box indicates “Members” page while green arrow indicates edit button.
Photo credit: Roxanne Pourshoustari