New incidental record

2012	All years

4DG 2012 - 80% Challenge!
Get four degrees of 'greater Gauteng' to green in 2012
more info...
Surveys needed to reach target	Pentads	Cards to go
4	263	1052
3	131	393
2	73	146
1	38	38
Total cards counting towards the challenge		675
Total cards still needed for target		1629
Total cards for target		2304
Pentad with 1 or more cards	313	54.34%
Pentad with 2 or more cards	182	31.60%
Pentad with 3 or more cards	109	18.92%
Pentad with 4 or more cards	71	12.33%
Total cards submitted in 2012		1151

747 Challenge - 7 cards, 4 degrees, 7 months.
Surveys needed to reach target	Pentads	Cards to go
3	30	90
2	21	42
1	10	10
Total cards needed		142
Pentads with 7 cards or more		515 (89.41%)

3DDG Challenge. Reach 4 cards or more!
Surveys needed to reach target	Pentads	Cards to go
4	27	108
3	59	177
2	60	120
1	38	38
Total cards needed		443
Pentads with 4 cards or more		417 (69.38%)

Date of survey	Pentad	Compiler
2012-05-19	2615_2900	Vasapolli, Dylan
2011-11-25	2425_2750	Paterson, D. Bruce
2012-05-17	2705_2505	Archer, Tony
2012-05-16	2710_2515	Archer, Tony
2012-05-17	2705_2510	Archer, Tony
2012-05-18	2715_2510	Archer, Tony
2012-05-17	2655_2505	Archer, Tony
2012-05-17	2705_2515	Archer, Tony
2012-05-17	2700_2510	Archer, Tony
2012-05-16	2710_2510	Archer, Tony
2012-05-16	2711_2535	Archer, Tony
2012-05-16	2715_2530	Bragg, Mary
2012-05-18	2710+2505	Archer, Tony
2011-11-25	2430_2755	Paterson, D. Bruce
2012-05-19	2840_2440	Herrmann, Eric
2011-11-27	2430_2805	Paterson, D. Bruce
2012-05-19	2440_2615	Jones, Matt
2012-05-18	2440_2610	Jones, Matt
2012-05-17	2440_2610	Jones, Matt
2012-02-12	2600_2740	Paterson, D. Bruce
2012-05-12	2440_2625	Hawkins, Ross
2012-05-11	2445_2615	Hawkins, Ross
2012-04-20	3400_2305	Drowley, John
2011-11-26	2420_2750	Paterson, D. Bruce
2011-12-04	2605_2705	Paterson, D. Bruce
2012-05-12	2605_2750	Branfield, Andy
2012-05-14	2500_2605	Jones, Matt
2012-05-08	2520_2030	Walden, Amanda Barbera
2012-05-06	2610_2030	Walden, Amanda Barbera
2012-05-13	2800_3205	Malan, Tineke

70 000 checklists – Keep the SABAP2 blaze alight

Les Underhill (2012-05-19)

This week on Thursday SABAP2 reached 70000 checklists submitted into the SABAP2 database. This table gives the dates on which SABAP2 atlasers achieved 10000, 20000, ..., 70000 checklists, respectively:

Checklists	Date	Days
0	01/07/2007
10000	19/12/2008	537
20000	04/08/2009	228
30000	21/02/2010	201
40000	21/09/2010	212
50000	21/03/2011	181
60000	27/10/2011	220
70000	17/05/2012	203

The striking thing is that the first 10000 checklists took 537 days, nearly 18 months from the start of the project in July 2007 until December 2008. Since then, we have been ticking off each additional 10000 checklists fairly consistently at intervals of around 200 days. Our best 10000 was getting from 40000 to 50000 in only 181 days, between 21 September 2010 and 21 March 2011.

At face value, it is alarming that the SABAP2 database is still only half the size of the SABAP1 database! That contained 147000 checklists, and 7.3 million records (compared with SABAP2's 3.7 million). But that comparison is simplistic because a large proportion, probably as many as half, of the checklists in SABAP1 were made prior to the formal start of SABAP1 in 1987. The SABAP1 database incorporated checklists from regional atlases for the Southwestern Cape, Free State and the old Transvaal, and as much compatible data from 1980 onwards, that we could lay our hands on!

Let us not relax on our laurels. SABAP1 was described as the largest biodiversity project ever conducted on the continent of Africa. Let us keep the fire burning. Let us continue to steadily build SABAP2 so that it becomes even bigger than SABAP1 was. Each of our contributions might seem small and insignificant. The strength of SABAP2 lies in our ability to pool our individual resources into something massive, and massively influential in understanding trends in biodiversity and in guiding policy, legislation and conservation management.

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SABAP2012 at 15%

Les Underhill (2012-05-14)

Five and a half months through the year, and SABAP2012 is on 15%. Given that the rate of progress inevitably slows down as easily accessible pentads are reached, this means that we are on track for at least doubling this coverage in the remaining seven and a half months until the end of 2012. We set the initial target for SABAP2012 at 30%, because this is what we achieved in SABAP2011 (without actually trying to visit as many pentads in the year as possible).

The value of trying to visit as many pentads as possible on an annual basis, and of getting several checklists for each pentad in each year, is that it will enable us to make statistically defensible annual statements on variation in timing of migration, both arrival and departure, the impact of differing amounts of rainfall on bird distributions, and trends through time in distribution, both range expansions and contractions. If we can achieve this, South Africa will be the first country on the planet to use bird atlasing as a component of the annual bird monitoring programme. 30% coverage, annually, seems to just enough to be able to do this.

At the same time, we do not want to lose sight of the other priority, and that is, cumulatively through the years, to get as much of the atlas region as possible covered. We are delighted to have passed the 60% coverage level overall at the start of this month. The next big milestone is 2/3rds coverage, 66.67%, and we could easily achieve that by the end of the summer holidays. But it will probably take a few dedicated expeditions to get us there.

There are also regional milestones achieved over the weekend. Yesterday, the Western Cape reached 80% coverage. The last few one-percents in the search for 100% coverage are really tough, so we also celebrate KwaZulu-Natal reaching 96.0% coverage, with only 52 pentads out of 1296 left to visit.

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World Migratory Birds Day 2012 – 12–13 May

Les Underhill (2012-05-12)

Of the Animal Demography Unit's array of bird monitoring projects, SABAP2 and SAFRING make the most obvious contribution to an understanding of bird migration. Without this understanding, there would be nothing to celebrate for World Migratory Bird Day this weekend! Bird ringing, and its various derivatives, have enabled us to understand which bird species are migrants, and to track the most amazing long-distance movements of these species across the planet. Bird atlasing, at least if it is done in the way we do it throughout the year in southern Africa, enables us to understand the timing of migration.

The World Migratory Bird Day was initiated in 2006 and is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the protection of migratory birds and their habitats. On the second weekend of May each, people around the world are encouraged to celebrate World Migratory Bird Day. Each year a theme is chosen, and the theme for 2012 is Migratory birds and people – together through time

It was not too long ago that we were starting to think there was nothing more to learn about the migration of the Barn Swallow or that of the Common Tern through bird ringing. There was enough information. If you read the species accounts in the published atlas for SABAP1, they all talk about the timing of migration as if it is set in stone for all time. This paradigm has changed. In January this year, a paper was published in the new journal Nature Climate Change (vol 2, pp 121–124), by Vincent Devictor and 20 other co-authors. It was titled Differences in the climatic debts of birds and butterflies at a continental scale and dealt with the extent to which species (the birds were mostly migrants) are failing to keep pace with increasing temperatures across western Europe. Their paper was based on a sophisticated analysis of citizen science data collected across seven European countries. The results are important in their own right, and highly relevant to the concept of World Migratory Bird Day. But is is the first sentence of the "Acknowledgements" in this paper that I want to highlight: "We thank all skilled volunteer bird- and butterfly-watchers involved in national monitoring programmes; altogether, we estimate that more than 1,500,000 man-hours have been spent to conduct the bird and butterfly monitoring surveys (this estimate only corresponds to field work) necessary to this study."

So I want to end by gently twisting the theme for World Migratory Bird Day for 2012, and changing it to Migratory birds and CITIZEN SCIENTISTS – together through time. The bird ringers and the bird atlasers, the prototype citizen scientists, are the special people who have a critical ongoing role to play in the monitoring of bird migration. So it is essential to find the funding to keep both SAFRING and SABAP2 alive as ongoing projects, empowered to process the data generated by our citizen scientsts, which monitors the impacts of land-use change, climate change, powerlines, windturbines, poisons, ..., on our migrant birds.

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more news...

Cape Vultures in free fall...
24000 records in the Virtual Museum for butterflies, and how to make lists of butterflies...
Report back: Namibia Bird Club's 50th anniversary celebrations, and the launch of SABAP2 in Namibia...
Atlasing expedition to the Ceres Karoo – 18–20 May...
Virtual Museum for dragonflies and damselflies – 756 records identified...
The ADU's Virtual Museums are gaining momentum...
Sixty percent...
Mareetsane atlasing expedition: wrap up report...
3DDG challenge - seven months on...
Mareetsane atlasing expedition: report for Day 3 – Sunday 29 April...

 

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