Standardized Data from the Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data Project from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The RAATD project team consolidated tracking data for multiple species of Antarctic meso- and top-predators to identify Areas of Ecological Significance. These datasets constitute the compiled tracking data from a large number of research groups that have worked in the Antarctic since the 1990s.

This metadata record pertains to the "standardized" version of the data files. These files contain position estimates as provided by the original data collectors (generally, raw Argos or GPS locations, or estimated GLS locations). Original data files have been converted to a common format and quality-checking applied, but have not been further filtered or interpolated.

Periods at the start or end of deployments were identified and discarded if there was evidence that location data during these periods did not represent the animals' at-sea movement. For example, tags may have been turned on early (thereby recording locations prior to their deployment on animals) or animals may have remained at the deployment site, e.g. the breeding colony, for an extended period at the start or end of the tag deployment. Some tracks also showed a marked deterioration in the frequency and quality (for PTTs) of location estimates near the end of a track. Such locations were visually identified based on maps of each track in conjunction with plots of location distance from deployment site against time. This information is captured in the location_to_keep column appended to each species’ data file (1 = keep, 0 = discard). The code used to trim the tracks can be found in the https://github.com/SCAR/RAATD repository.

This data set comprises one metadata csv file that describes all deployments, along with data csv files (17 files, one per species) containing the position data. For details of the file formats, consult the data paper.

The data are also available in a filtered version (see https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/SCAR_EGBAMM_RAATD_2018) that have been processed using a state-space model in order to estimate locations at regular time intervals.

南极追踪数据回顾性分析项目（Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data, RAATD）是由南极研究科学委员会（Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research, SCAR）牵头的科研项目，由鸟类与海洋哺乳动物专家小组及南极生物多样性信息学小组共同主导，并获得南极海洋生物资源养护委员会（Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources）认可。该项目团队整合了多种南极中上层与顶级捕食者的追踪数据，以识别生态重要区域。这些数据集汇集了自20世纪90年代以来在南极开展研究的众多科研团队所提交的追踪数据。

本元数据（metadata）记录对应数据文件的“标准化”版本。此类文件包含原始数据采集方提供的位置估算结果（通常为原始阿戈斯（Argos）卫星定位、全球定位系统（GPS）点位，或是估算的GLS点位）。原始数据文件已被转换为统一格式并完成质量校验，但未进行进一步筛选或插值处理。

对于标记部署起始或结束阶段的时段，若有证据表明该时段内的位置数据无法反映动物的海上移动行为，则将其剔除。例如，标签可能提前启动（从而在动物被标记前就开始记录点位），或是动物在标记部署初期或末期长期停留在部署地点（如繁殖群落）。部分追踪轨迹在临近结束时，其位置估算的频率与质量（针对卫星终端发射机（Platform Terminal Transmitter, PTT））会出现显著下降。此类点位可通过结合每条追踪轨迹的地图，以及“点位与部署地的距离随时间变化”的绘图进行人工识别。相关信息已记录在每个物种类别数据文件中新增的"location_to_keep"列（1代表保留，0代表剔除）。用于修剪追踪轨迹的代码可在https://github.com/SCAR/RAATD 仓库中获取。

本数据集包含1份描述所有标记部署情况的元数据逗号分隔值（Comma-Separated Values, CSV）文件，以及17份物种专属逗号分隔值（CSV）数据文件（每个物种对应1份），内含位置数据。有关文件格式的详细信息，请参阅相关数据论文。

该数据集还提供了经过筛选的版本（详见https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/SCAR_EGBAMM_RAATD_2018），此版本通过状态空间模型（state-space model）进行处理，以估算固定时间间隔内的点位。