In 2002, the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network was created to track how tropical forests and wildlife change over time. Its core idea was to use the same field methods across many sites so results could be compared across countries, not just within one park.
A key early step was defining TEAM as a purposely designed network rather than a loose set of studies. This approach emphasized comparable sampling, repeated measurements, and shared data so the network could detect broad drivers like land-use change and climate change.
TEAM operationalized its monitoring by deploying large, grid-based camera-trap surveys across tropical forest landscapes. Camera traps (automatic cameras triggered by animal movement) made it possible to record many hard-to-see species consistently and repeatedly.
As camera-trap surveys produced hundreds of thousands of images, TEAM supported a dedicated software workflow called DeskTEAM. The system was designed to help field teams manage images, extract metadata, tag species names consistently, and export standardized data packages for sharing.
TEAM collaborated with computing partners to build web-based systems for storing, accessing, and analyzing monitoring data. This mattered because a global network needs tools for quality control and for making data usable across many sites and institutions.
TEAM emphasized open data as part of its monitoring model, enabling researchers and practitioners to query camera-trap datasets across sites. Public access helped turn local surveys into a shared evidence base for comparing biodiversity change across regions.
TEAM publications described the network’s goal as detecting changes in tropical forests early enough to inform conservation decisions. The approach combined standardized field sampling with faster data processing and sharing, narrowing the time between measurements and management action.
By mid-2017, TEAM transitioned from a centrally run program to a voluntary, decentralized network of partners. Many partner groups continued collecting monitoring data, but the shift changed how coordination, funding, and shared tools were organized.
After the 2017 transition, monitoring did not continue uniformly everywhere. For example, monitoring linked to TEAM in Suriname is described as ending in 2017, showing how long-term networks can be affected by funding and logistics at the site level.
Wildlife Insights began hosting TEAM-related information and announced migration of TEAM and its analytics system to the Wildlife Insights platform. The move aimed to keep the data usable and maintained as tools and communities shifted to shared cloud repositories.
Wildlife Insights provides public download options for camera-trap species-occurrence data from projects that choose to share. This kind of infrastructure supports the TEAM legacy by helping large camera-trap datasets remain discoverable and reusable under shared rules for access and citation.
Today, TEAM is widely cited as a major example of standardized, multi-site tropical forest biodiversity monitoring using repeated camera-trap surveys and open data practices. Its long-term outcome is a clearer model for how conservation monitoring can be comparable across countries and sustained through shared data systems, even when program structures change.
TEAM Network Tropical Forest Monitoring Program (2002–present)