1

The Atlas of Australian Birds

From atlassing to monitoring

2

Overview

• A very brief history of Atlas• Project objectives• Data structure• Challenges• Regional scale reporting• Resourcing

3

The Atlas – a one minute history

• First Atlas 1977-1981: project initiated to establish species distributions

• Second atlas 1998-2002: point locations defined

• Continuous data flow since 1998 –currently stable at over 2,000 surveys/month

4

Data volume:sightings per year (total c. 8M)

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

1400000

1600000

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008Year

No. o

f Sig

htin

gs

5

Data volume:surveys per year (total c. 0.5M)

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000

100000

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008Year

No. o

f Sur

veys

6

Participation:number of active observers (total ≥ 5556)

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008Year

No

of O

bser

vers

7

Project Objectives• Original aim was to map distribution• Some current aims:

> track (and report on) population changes

: in abundance

: in distribution

> engage communities in biodiversity/monitoring

8

Other potential objectives

• Integrate with national monitoring • Integrate with international reporting

objectives• Contribute to ‘indicators’ approaches

9

Data collection• Area searches: within 500m or 5km

radius, ≥ 20 min• Incidental search: usually a one-off

sighting• 2ha/20min search • Fixed route surveys: fixed site/method• Group atlassing sites: fixed site/method

10

Data structure

• Increasing proportion of fixed-site, fixed effort and count data, and repeat visits

• Potentially large amount of latent structure (repeated area searches which are Fixed Route Surveys)

11

Regional ReportingACRIS Rangelands

• Composite indices (Ross Cunningham – A.N.U.);

• Change in reporting rates based on presence-absence data

• High level of heterogeneity of trend across IBRAs

• Assessed trends for 60 most common species in 10 IBRAs

12

13

14

15

16

17

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 post2006

Year

No

. of s

pec

ies

Slight peak

Stong peak

Strong trough

Slight trough

18

Key Challenge: engagement Atlassers are:

• Highly skilled• Patchily distributed (heavily

concentrated in the coastal population centres)

• Old!

19

Key Challenge: promote fixed-site monitoring

• Defined sites• Repeat visits• Controlled sampling effort and method• Same observer per site• Continuity - Australian Bird Count 1986-

96

20

Resources

21

Where do birds fit inNational Accounts?

As a surrogate for assessing the condition of native vegetation – Wentworth Group

• Well distributed across habitats• Play a variety of ecological roles• Use a wide variety of resources• Cheap to count• Manageable number of species• Existing datasets

22

How are we incorporating these data?

Partnership with Atlas of Living Australia

• Birds Australia database remains central repository

• All data made freely available to ALA• ALA assisting BA in tools for data acquisition,

capture, management - web-based portals• BA manages data acquisition, quality, licence

restrictions

23

Potential role in research? Yes – but only if you’re asking the right

questions

Can TERN support it better?

Yes – but don’t give us a new survey method

24

Thanks

www.birdsaustralia.com.au