Amateur birders' reports track
trends in government bird surveys, could fill data gaps in developing nations
Date: March 12, 2018
Source: University of Utah
As long as there have been
birdwatchers, there have been lists. Birders keep detailed records of the
species they've seen and compare these lists with each other as evidence of
their accomplishments. Now those lists, submitted and aggregated to birding
site eBird, can help scientists track bird populations and identify
conservation issues before it's too late.
Joshua Horns is an eBird user
himself and a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah. In a
paper published today in Biological Conservation, Horns and colleagues
report that eBird observations match trends in bird species populations
measured by U.S. government surveys to within 0.4 percent.
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