December 29th, 2023
The 20th EBP meeting brings together 49 people from 21 different countries in Brno (Czech Republic)
The meeting was
organized by the Czech Society for Ornithology (CSO) and took place during
November 20-21 at the Institute of Vertebrate Biology of the Czech Academy of
Sciences in Brno.
This time, the EBP meeting had a different format than previous ones as
it included a LIFE EBP Reinforcement workshop
aimed to support the completion of the EBP data flow by means of adding all the
species recorded in Europe and by properly identifying and characterizing all
data submitted using particular protocols (e.g. standard monitoring projects,
nocmig, project specific field protocols, etc). Moreover, just after this meeting,
during November 22-25, a second LIFE EBP Reinforcement workshop was
organized at the same place, though this one only was open to the partners of
the seven target countries of the LIFE project in SE Europe (Albania, Bosnia
& Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia).
The participants in front of the Institute of Vertebrate Biology of the Czech Academy of Sciences
The meeting was
attended by 49 persons from 21 different countries and started on Monday
afternoon with the welcoming words of Jan Zukal, director of the Institute of
Vertebrate Biology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and Verena Keller, chair
of the EBCC.
Then the representatives
of Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova,
Montenegro, Serbia and Malta gave a brief presentation about each organization
and a description of their needs regarding standard bird monitoring/online bird
portals and how they would like to meet these needs thanks to the LIFE project.
The session continued
with an overview of the LIFE
EBP Reinforcement project, the EBBA2 Live Farmland project and
the International Census Plots (ICP) project
and finished talking about the protocols table and its relevance to properly
identify and characterize all data submitted using more elaborate data
collection procedures (e.g. standard monitoring projects, nocmig, project
specific field protocols, etc).
The meeting was attended by 49 persons from 21 different countries
The Tuesday morning
session started with an overview about the EBP data standard and the EBP data
flow system and with the presentation of the overall approach that will be
followed to add the data of the new species and the protocols information (timings,
how to deal with new/old data, etc) to the EBP data flow (see LIFE WorPackage 8 for more information on this task).
The morning session
finished discussing about taxonomy. It was agreed that, to develop the LIFE WorPackage 8, the EBP would follow the last version of
the HBW-BirdLife taxonomy (version 8.0). It was stressed that this work will also
require the mapping of the taxonomy of each local portal to the EBP one, a work
that will be carried out by each local portal with the support of the EBP
coordination team.
The first
part of the Tuesday afternoon session was devoted to cover some EBP topics that
were less directly related to the LIFE project. This included a brief update of
the EBP project and the new EFSA-EBP-EURING contract and the presentation of one
of the first outputs of this work: the implementation of the Bird Flu Radar in the new Migration
Mapping Tool and the creation of an automatic alert system.
The session
continued with the presentation of the results of a paper that analysed the geographical
patterns of arrival of 30 common migrant bird species using EBP data and the GBIF
Humboldt extension, an extension of the GBIF code that will allow GBIF to correctly
store and handle the datasets collected using more structured protocols (e.g. complete
lists).
Coffee breaks gave plenty of space to continue conversations
Finally, it
was commented that the next in-person EBP meeting will take place in SE Europe
in autumn 2024, most probably October. As the one taking place in Brno, it was
pointed out that this meeting will be again a combination of a regular EBP
meeting a various LIFE
EBP Reinforcement workshops (two linked to the EBP viewer
and, thus, of overall interest to the EBP community, and one focused on the partners
of SE Europe and the regional dynamization campaign that will be organized in
that area in 2025 and 2026).
The meeting finalised
with a session devoted to discuss the use of data collected outside primary
areas by EBP and the local partners. Here, representatives from Observation.org,
eBird,
Ornitho
and Trektellen explained which were the technical and legal
possibilities of these portals in terms of sharing observations and personal
information with the local partners.
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December 11th, 2023
Training workshop on International Census Plots (ICP) and on-line portals
The participants of the workshop in front of the Institute for Vertebrate Biology
In November
(22nd-25th) Czech Society for Ornithology (CSO) organised a training workshop
on on-line portals and International Census Plots (ICPs) in Brno (at the Institute for Vertebrate Biology).
The training workshop
was held after the regular EuroBirdPortal (EBP) meeting and workshop on EBP
data flow, which lasted for two days (20th-21st of
November). The aim of the training workshop was to introduce the partners of
the LIFE EBP Reinforcement Project to the concept and methodology of the standard
bird monitoring and ICP, as well as structuring and running a national on-line
portal. In total, 20 participants from 12 European countries have attended the training
workshop.
The topics of the
workshop were divided into four main parts. The first part was led by Petr
Voříšek from CSO and focused on questions while setting up a standard bird
monitoring scheme, and explanation of the concept and methodology of the ICP, along
with the subsequent data management and data checks. Because each country
within the project will not have the capacity to start a full-grown national
bird monitoring scheme, the idea is to collect the data with the same
methodology across countries, which will then be placed into one dataset in
order to produce a regional index of population change. Hopefully, with time,
the capacities of the countries will increase, and they will have a good
starting point for their own national bird monitoring scheme.
Petr Voříšek, from CSO, talking about setting-up a standard bird monitoring scheme
Within the first day,
representatives from Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro have presented their own
pilot work in starting a monitoring scheme and various issues and challenges
they are facing. The main common issue shared across the partners is lack of
skilled volunteers for bird monitoring. For example, in Moldova there are
currently 10 people doing the pilot monitoring work, in Serbia around 30
people, and in Montenegro some 3 people have joined the pilot scheme. Within
this project, a large part will be dedicated in trying to increase the interest
of people and their fieldwork capabilities to establish a bigger network of
volunteers.
Representatives from Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro presenting their own experiences with bird monitoring
The second part was
led by colleagues from Catalan Ornithological Institute (Gabriel Gargallo, Marc
Illa and Xavier Riera) and was focused on establishing national on-line portals,
from setting up a portal to recruitment of observers and keeping them
interested to managing and checking the on-line portal data. It was important
to go into details of each section regarding the on-line portals as
participants from the key countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo,
Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia) will establish their own
national portal as a part of the project and will be responsible for its set-up
and long-term running. One part that might be helpful in assembling all issues
at one place is the update of the Best Practice Guide that should be produced
by the end of 2024.
The colleagues from the Catalan Ornithological Institute lead the section of the workshop on online bird portals
Third section was
presented by Anna Staneva from BirdLife Europe, Alena Klvaňová from CSO and
Gabriel Gargallo from ICO about the policy relevance of the data collected
through on-line bird portals and standard bird monitoring as well as its
implications in science and research. Similarly, more local case studies have
been presented from Romania, Spain and Czech Republic in order to serve as an
inspiration of what could be done. The section ended with the discussion on
local needs of partners and their respective issues and challenges within the
framework of national policies.
Finally, we ended the
workshop with a day in the field by going through the ICP methodology and
different ways of entering the data directly into various applications in the
field. Even the cold weather did not stop the enthusiasm of the participants
that they will surely transfer to others in their own respective countries. We
hope that this project will be an excellent starting point for the partners to
increase their capacity and slowly start to develop a larger interest into bird
observations and standard bird monitoring within their own countries.
Not even the cold weather stopped the fieldwork session
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October 19th, 2023
International Census Plots: a tool to fill the geographical gaps in bird monitoring in Europe
In order to
achieve better data on bird numbers and distribution, we need to develop
generic monitoring schemes in parts of Europe where they still do not exist.
Setting up and running schemes based on fieldwork by volunteers is a challenge
in many parts of the continent and that’s why EBCC started the International
Census Plots scheme. By taking part in the scheme, countries can provide their
monitoring data to the European dataset and develop comprehensive national
schemes in the future. However, this can only happen by providing further
support to national coordinators of the scheme.
We need to fill
in the gaps in coverage of Europe by bird monitoring
There is no doubt that standardised large-scale monitoring of bird
abundances together with distribution atlases provide valuable information for
research and conservation. Outputs of the Pan-European
Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) have been widely used in international
and national policies, and, furthermore, the data collected via PECBMS
helped to answer various
scientific questions. The first European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA1) was
used in 3,150 scientific
publications and we expect
that EBBA2 will also be widely used for
science and policy.
However, there are gaps in our picture of European population trends:
large areas, mostly in eastern and southeastern part of the continent have not yet
developed monitoring schemes which would cover the whole territory of
individual countries.
Countries
contributing to European trends and indices produced by PECBMS (2021)
There are multiple reasons for the gaps. Often, there are only a few
field ornithologists and volunteer birdwatchers in these areas.
The number of
fieldworkers contributing to the second European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA2)
illustrates the geographical bias in capacities for monitoring in Europe. While
there were some 40 observers per one 50 km square in some western European
countries, there was only one observer per two 50 km squares in the east of the
continent
This is usually caused by complex reasons some of which may include less
wealthy economic situation and shorter tradition in volunteer field ornithology.
Further contributing factors can be poor infrastructure, difficult access to
some areas or difficult conditions for the development of NGOs and civic
society.
It is difficult,
but we can do it
Experience in EBBA2 shows, that despite the difficulties, colleagues in
eastern and southeastern Europe can deliver great results. Particularly when
their effort is supported by training, capacity building and decent funding.
Coverage of
Europe in EBBA1 and EBBA2 documents an increase in the quality of atlas data in
eastern and southeastern Europe between the two atlases.
Setting up a full scale national monitoring scheme in the near future is
however unrealistic. The capacity must be built up step by step. In the meantime,
we can start the monitoring with capacities that are already available and
contribute to PECBMS in a relatively short time period via the approach of the International
Census Plots (ICP). Such plots, if properly surveyed, can provide data for
European population indices and indicators, as well as planned updated
maps of distribution and serve as a basis for the full scale national
monitoring schemes in the future.
The approach of
International Census Plots should help
The approach was proposed within the EBCC in 2000s, but was never put
into practice. The idea is that instead of setting up large numbers of census
plots in each country individually; the census plots are set up in several
countries simultaneously having a lower number of plots in each country. Thus,
the overall set of plots will not produce data good enough to calculate
reliable national population indices, but should be good enough to generate
indices representative of the wider region. Later on, as the monitoring is
being conducted at the international census plots, capacity at the national
level will increase and once it becomes sufficient, the international census
plots will serve as a basis for developing of national schemes.
In ICP, where raw data from several countries will need to be combined
for calculation of the population index and trend, caution must be paid to compatibility
of the field method across the region where it is applied. While in combination
of national population indices as practiced in PECBMS, different field methods
don’t pose a problem because national indices instead of raw data are combined,
this would be different in ICP. Thus, the field method should be kept the same
across the countries participating in ICP as much as possible.
Line transect has been found to serve the purpose the best in ICP and is
therefore recommended as a field method in the countries taking part in the
scheme.
Raw data from the ICP should be shared in order to allow calculation of
regional and European population trends and indices, but the organisations
running the national parts of the ICP are the owners of the data. Running a
national database and potentially also mobile phone apps for field data
recordings poses a further challenge to organisations with limited capacities.
The LIFE EBP
Reinforcement will help expand the ICP network in SE Europe.
Some ICP pilot schemes have been developed in Serbia since 2021, where
around 30 plots have been surveyed annually since then, and in Moldova since 2022, and
these pilots have brough promising results. However, for the ICP to be making a
real difference the network of ICP sites had to be further extended and this is
exactly what is going to be done now thanks to the LIFE EBP Reinforcement.
Within the LIFE project, the main objective is to further develop the ICP
network in Serbia and Moldova but also implement the scheme in five other
countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and
Kosovo. The overall target is to have a network of at least 70 ICP sites in the
region by the end of 2026.
To do so, among other things, the LIFE project is going to improve the know-how
and capacities of the national ICP organizers through an specific training workshop and will
seek also for synergies with the online bird portals and their associated apps in
order to improve data collection.
We expect that once the ICP network is expanded and run for c. 3-5 years,
the data produced will be good enough to contribute to European species trends
and indices. Moreover, this data, together with the one already collected by PECBMS
and the online bird portals, should also be used in the framework of the EBBA2 Live Farmland project.
And in a longer term, hopefully, ICP will develop into fully independent
national breeding bird monitoring schemes.
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July 17th, 2023
A grant to further improve the capabilities of the EBP project
A new LIFE grant will help to further improve the capabilities of the EBP project during the next years.
The project, entitled “Improving the capabilities of the EuroBirdPortal project in order to boost its contribution towards EU policy objectives under the Birds Directive and the 2030 Biodiversity Strategy", in short "LIFE EBP reinforcement" (project 101104367 — LIFE22-PLP-ES-EBP reinforcement), main aim is to improve the quantity and quality of bird-related data in Europe to enhance their contribution to EU policy objectives under the EU Birds Directive and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
To do so, the EBP will closely work with the two other EBCC projects (the European Breeding Bird Atlas 2 (EBBA2) and the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS)), as the combination of their different datasets and know-how will certainly increase the overall value of the policy relevant outputs.
Specifically, the main objectives of project are:
1) Improving the geographical coverage and the overall quality of the bird-related data collected in Europe by increasing participation, data collection and use of more structured data collection protocols, particularly, in SE and E Europe.
2) Adding all the species recorded in Europe to the EuroBirdPortal (EBP) data flow making full use of the EBP data standard and updating the EBP viewer accordingly.
3) Producing two demonstrative outputs that showcase how the improved capabilities of the EBP project could be applied to help implement key EU Biodiversity Strategy goals.
The project has a duration of three years and a half (July 2023 to December 2026) and an overall cost of 1.110.605,44 €, of which 90% (999.544,89 €) are financed by the European Union.
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