Collaborative monitoring over broad scales and levels of ecological organization can inform conservation efforts necessary to address the contemporary biodiversity crisis. An important challenge to collaborative monitoring is motivating local engagement with enough buy-in from stakeholders while providing adequate top-down direction for scientific rigor, quality control, and coordination. Collaborative monitoring must reconcile this inherent tension between top-down control and bottom-up engagement. Highly mobile and cryptic taxa, such as bats, present a particularly acute challenge. Given their scale of movement, complex life histories, and rapidly expanding threats, understanding population trends of bats requires coordinated broad-scale collaborative monitoring. The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) reconciles top-down, bottom-up tension with a hierarchical master sample survey design, integrated data analysis, dynamic data curation, regional monitoring hubs, and knowledge delivery through web-based infrastructure. NABat supports collaborative monitoring across spatial and organizational scales and the full annual lifecycle of bats.

在广泛的规模和水平上对生态组织进行协作监测，可以为解决当代生物多样性危机提供必要的保护措施。协作监控的一个重要挑战是，在利益相关者的充分支持下，促使当地参与，同时为科学严谨，质量控制和协调提供足够的自上而下的指导。协作监视必须调和自上而下的控制与自下而上的参与之间的这种内在张力。高度活动和隐秘的类群（例如蝙蝠）提出了特别严峻的挑战。考虑到它们的活动规模，复杂的生活史以及迅速扩大的威胁，了解蝙蝠的种群趋势需要协调一致的大规模协作监测。北美蝙蝠监测计划（NABat）协调自上而下，自下而上的张力，具有分层的主样本调查设计，集成的数据分析，动态数据管理，区域监视中心以及通过基于Web的基础结构提供知识。NABat支持跨空间和组织规模以及蝙蝠的整个年度生命周期的协作监视。