SNAPSHOT USA 2019-2023: The first five years of data from a coordinated camera trap survey of the United States

SNAPSHOT USA is an annual, multi-contributor camera trap survey of mammals across the United States. The growing SNAPSHOT USA dataset is intended for tracking the spatial and temporal responses of mammal populations to changes in land use, land cover, and climate. These data will be useful for exploring the drivers of spatial and temporal changes in relative abundance and distribution, as well as the impacts of species interactions on daily activity patterns. SNAPSHOT USA 2019–2023 contains 987,979 records of camera trap image sequence data and 9,694 records of camera trap deployment metadata. Data were collected across the United States of America in all 50 states, 12 ecoregions, and many ecosystems. Data were collected between August 1st and December 29th each year from 2019 to 2023. The dataset includes a wide range of taxa but is primarily focused on medium to large mammals. SNAPSHOT USA 2019–2023 comprises two .csv files. The original data can be found with..., The first three annual SNAPSHOT USA surveys were coordinated by Roland Kays, Michael Cove, and William McShea. The 2019, 2020, and 2021 datasets are accessible for public use through the Supporting Information of their respective publications. Although the 2019 and 2020 surveys were originally processed and stored in eMammal (https://www.emammal.si.edu), all data are now housed in Wildlife Insights (WI) within the SNAPSHOT USA Initiative. The two most recent surveys, 2022 and 2023, were coordinated by the SNAPSHOT USA Survey Coordinator Brigit Rooney. This dataset represents the first publication of 2022 and 2023 SNAPSHOT USA data.
The SNAPSHOT USA project developed a standard protocol in 2019 to survey mammals >100 g and large identifiable birds. Cameras are unbaited and set at approximately 50 cm height across an array of at least 7 cameras with a minimum distance of 200 m and a maximum of 5 km between them. The collection period for SNAPSHOT USA data is between September and ..., , # SNAPSHOT USA 2019-2023: The first five years of data from a coordinated camera trap survey of the United States

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngfhn](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngfhn)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: ssusa\_finalsequences.csv

**Description:** This file contains all the image sequence data from Snapshot USA 2019-2023, including species taxonomy information. The data can be connected to the deployments file by the Deployment ID column.

**NA values:** In this file, \"NA\" means \"Not Applicable.\" All taxonomic variables except for \"Common_Name\" contain some NA cells because the species identifications contain varying levels of taxonomic information. An identification may be \"NA\" for taxonomic Class if it is a non-animal identification, such as Vehicle. The variables \"Age\" and \"Sex\" also contain NA cells, and these refer to instances where it was not possible for the image tagger to identify the age and/or sex ...,