南非鸟人参与鸟类普查，两年超过百万笔记录

南非鸟人参与鸟类普查，两年超过百万笔记录

是两年前开展的“非洲南部鸟类地图工程2”的一部分，至今收到超过一百万个样方纪录。

希望很快中国也可以举行类似的普查和绘制比较准确的鸟类地图，这对以后的持续监测，了解鸟类种群动态很有贡献。

http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2009/07/southern_african_atlas.html

One million South African bird records!

02-07-2009

Just two years ago, an exciting project was initiated to map the distribution of birds in Southern Africa using the efforts of keen civil society volunteers. Early on the morning of Monday 29 June, the millionth record was submitted to the project!  

Southern Africa's birdwatchers are making a massive contribution to one of the country's most important biodiversity research projects. Ornithologists and conservationists are tapping into the skills and enthusiasm of Southern Africa's birdwatchers to collect information about the distribution and relative abundance of its 850 or so bird species.

"The Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2 (SABAP2) builds on the success of SABAP1, which was undertaken from 1987 to 1991", said Doug Harebottle, the manager of SABAP2. The dedication of 554 birdwatchers is certainly paying off. Professor Les Underhill, Director of the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town which is coordinating the project, said "The 30th June 2009 was the second anniversary of the project, with 780,000 of the million records being submitted in the past 12 months".  

SABAP2 is a partnership between the University of Cape Town's Animal Demography Unit (ADU), the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), and BirdLife South Africa (BirdLife Partner). The ADU provides the technical skills, SANBI provides the financial resources and BirdLife South Africa’s members are the 'citizen scientists' who are in the field collecting the data. SABAP2 uses innovative technologies, where the submission of bird records, the verification of the data, and the subsequent preliminary analyses are all electronic. As a result, the records on the project website are updated every three hours

"Our members' contributions to the project and ultimately to bird conservation are invaluable" —Mark Anderson, BirdLife South Africa

The project's methods are very simple. "One essentially completes a list of the birds seen in an 9 x 9 km area over a minimum of two hours, visiting all the different habitats during that time", said Doug Harebottle. "The listing of the birds in the order in which they were observed allows for a crude estimation of abundance, as common species would generally be recorded first", he explained. The data are then entered into specially developed software, and submitted to the ADU electronically.  

Dr Phoebe Barnard at SANBI, chair of the project's steering committee, said "The project has several aims, with one of the most important being to map over a fine scale the distribution of South Africa's birds. This information will allow us to make comparisons over time, especially to determine climate change effects on bird distributions and to allow for fine-scale conservation planning".

"BirdLife South Africa's members are very involved in this project", said Mark Anderson, Executive Director of BirdLife South Africa. "Some of our members have become very passionate about SABAP2 and their contributions to the project and ultimately to bird conservation are invaluable. It would be impossible to employ professional ornithologists to achieve the results of these 'citizen scientists'."

Over the past few days, atlasers eagerly kept their eyes on the website, waiting to watch the meter tick over to the one millionth bird. Finally it did. The millionth record was recorded by atlaser Christopher Patton, that of a White-backed Vulture Gyps africanus, ironically a species predicted to be negatively affected by climate and land-use change.