Common bird monitoring scheme in Bulgaria

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 221,669 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Hristov I, Stoychev S, Spasov S, Popgeorgiev G (2024). Common bird monitoring scheme in Bulgaria. Version 1.4. Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds. Occurrence dataset. https://cloud.gbif.org/eca/resource?r=cbm_data_bulgaria&v=1.4

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 0c5f7cb7-1973-4f0e-994f-dfc69fcabc0e.  Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Participant Node Managers Committee.

Keywords

Occurrence; Birds; Monitoring; Conservation; Bulgaria; Observation

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Bulgaria

Taxonomic Coverage

N/A

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

The region of the Balkans is identified as a European biodiversity hot spot. The Balkans include part of Croatia, the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria and the European part of Turkey. The Balkans is part of the Mediterranean Key Biodiversity Area (KBA). However, the biodiversity in the Balkans is threatened. More and more Balkan countries open their economies and become more accessible and attractive for large international investors and tourists. This causes major landscape changes. Agriculture is intensifying, infrastructure is being modernised and expanding at an accelerated pace, hydroelectric power stations in rivers are build, etc. Reliable data on species occurrence is needed for evidence-based conservation and management and further research on the biodiversity in the Balkans. Unfortunately, only a small amount of the geographically referenced species occurrence data from the Balkans is available. Baseline data on many groups like mammals, insects, plants, reptiles and amphibians are absent. With this project, we aim to mobilise data from the Balkans. Species specialists from five Balkan countries will be trained in data mobilisation. By promoting, communicating, and training researchers, the project will demonstrate the importance of FAIR data availability, aiming at mainstreaming biodiversity data publication in the region. The target is publishing more than 100.000 records, which will increase the number of published data on mammals, birds, insects, fish, reptiles and amphibians by at least 10%. The results of this project will also be published in Biodiversity Data Journal (Pensoft Publishers).

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

The field survey methodology includes selection of two transects oriented N-S or E-W depending on the terrain. Transects are recommended to be 500m apart from each other and 250 m from the sides of the square. If the terrain does not allow, it is possible to use data from only one transect to include the square into the surveys. The sampling effort includes two transects across the square, 1 km long each. If the terrain does not allow surveying of 2 transects, the data from survey plot can be considered even with only one transect. Each square has one person responsible for it. Once the transects are selected, the observer should conduct two visits each year in approximately the same time. First (early) visit is in the period April 15th to May 15th and second (late) visit in the period May 16th – June 15th. Mountainous survey plots may have later dates for visits.

Method step description:

1. During survey work, observers record each individual bird. The distance to the birds is entered in four categories 1 (0-25m), 2 (25-100m), 3 (>100 m), F – for birds flying over. Other than bird data, observers are asked to collect data for the beginning and the end of the survey. The database calculates the number of visits per year of each survey plot in relation to the date of visit.
2. The data collected in the period 2004 - 2016, are georeferenced in the centroid of the MGRS UTM 1 km. Data after 2016 are collected with a mobile app for Android developed specifically for the purpose (SmartBirds Pro).

Additional Metadata