The European bird monitoring programmes as potential

source of geo-referenced bird data

Petr Voříšek

Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) & European Breeding Bird Atlas 2 (EBBA2), Czech Society for

Ornithology/European Bird Census Council (EBCC)

Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS)

Goal: to use common birds as indicators Source of data: national/regional monitoring schemes

www.ebcc.info/pecbm.html27 countries, 163 species

in 2014

1km

500m

Standardised methodsVolunteer fieldworkers > 11 000

Species indices

Main PECBMS outputsCommon bird indicators

More on http://www.ebcc.info/pecbm0

25

50

75

100

125

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

Popula

tion index

(1980=100)

All common species (135) Forest species (29) Farmland species (36)

EBCC/ RSPB/ BirdLife/ Statistics Netherlands

Streptopelia turtur

0

25

50

75

100

125

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

Popula

tion index (1980=100)

West Europe South Europe Central & East Europe

EBCC/ RSPB/ BirdLife/ Statistics Netherlands

Changes in absolute abundance and biomass

Inger et al. 2015. Ecology Letters.

Regional indices

Use of PECBMS outputs for policy & promotion purposes

PECBMS outputs used in 23 scientific peer-reviewed papers

Common bird indicators • included in 7 international sets of indicators• accepted by governments as official indicator in at least 26

European countries

PECBMS network

National Coordinator

s

Volunteers

Central Coordination

Unit

Statistics Netherland

s

Technical Group

Steering Group

raw dataExpertisesoftware coordination

advice

coordinationadvice

national indices

oversees the projectmanagement

assists with technical statistical issues

Annual Indices, Indicators & Reports

TRIM (= TRends & Indices for Monitoring data):

• analyses time series of count data from monitoring scheme with missing observations

• uses log-linear models and Poisson regression

• considers both site-effect and year-effect in the models

• allows to incorporate weights and covariates in the calculation

• calculates species yearly indices and trends (slopes)

Calculation national & supranational indices

Production of European indices & indicators

1. TRIM output files from national coordinators

2. Data quality control at central coordination level

3. Production of European indices and indicators (PECBMS coordination team)

Data provision form for TRIM usersLegend:Habitat - Please indicate roughly for each species which part of the national population uses farmland, forest ot other habitats using categories: less than 25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and >75%. 1st year - start year, 1st year for which data for particular species is availablelast year - last year for which data for particular species is availableout-file name, ocv-file name - names of TRIM output files sent

Country: Name: e-mail:

Species Euring code Group of species Habitat 1st year last year out-file name ocv-file nameAccipiter nisus 2690 all other common speciesAegithalos caudatus 14370 all other common speciesAlauda arvensis 9760 common farmland speciesAnthus trivialis 10090 common forest speciesBonasa bonasia 3260 common forest speciesBurhinus oedicnemus 4590 common farmland species

Contributing countries and their time serieshttp://www.ebcc.info/index.php?ID=561#Box%20Participating%20countries

Always produced by TRIM and regularly used by PECBMS:• OUT file – contains outputs of calculation, indices and trends• OCV file – contains year-year covariances (needed only for calculation

of European indices)

Data files produced by TRIM

Optionally:S1 – contains slope parameters and indices for each yearF1 – contrains estimated and imputed counts on site level

Data files produced by TRIM

So far, F1 files used only for special research studies and internal exploration of the usage of site-level data.

Use of F1 files subject of approval by national coordinators.

F1 files in detailsExample: data collated in 2012

Country name Scheme name Number of plots Firs year Last year N. species

Austria Austria 292 1998 2010 90

Czech Republic Czech Republic 120 1982 2010 190

Denmark Denmark 229 1976 2010 84

Finland Finland 230 1975 2010 88

France France 2020 2001 2012 219

Italy Italy 313 2000 2010 149

Latvia Latvia New 30 2005 2010 91

Latvia Latvia Old 241 1995 2006 32

Netherland Netherlands 2806 1984 2010 187

Norway Norway New 118 2006 2010 52

Poland Poland 665 2000 2010 115

Republic of Ireland Ireland 385 1998 2010 57

Spain Catalonia 312 2002 2010 48

Spain Spain 401 1998 2010 106

Sweden Sweden New 704 1998 2010 176

Sweden Sweden Old 466 1975 2010 135

Switzerland Switzerland 343 1999 2010 124

United Kingdom UK 4143 1966 2010 73

F1 files in details: • Sites at different spatial resolution depending on fieldmethods

1km

500m

• Large amount of data• Inconsistencies in site codes• F1 not available when data from more schemes within a country are

combined• Use of weights and covariates in models modifies the values in F1• Completeness of species asemblage info?• Various coordination systems used• Approval by national coordinators needed

European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA2)2013-2017

• Updated distribution maps for all European breeding birds at 50x50 km resolution:

• Breeding evidence• Abundance

• Changes in distribution from 1980s to 2010s at 50x50 km resolution

• fine-grained distribution for as many bird species as possible and project them at a resolution of 10x10 km (model)

This atlas will be one of the biggest biodiversity datasets across the world!!

Online bird portals

Diversity of online bird data gathering platforms in Europe

EuroBird Portals (EBP) Initiative

• Which data the most suitable?• When needed?• Format?• Conditions of use? • What to be done? (capacity?)

Questions