The Greenspace Bird Calculator: a citizen-driven tool for monitoring avian biodiversity in urban greenspaces

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 468-476
Author(s):  
Corey T. Callaghan ◽  
John H. Wilshire ◽  
John M. Martin ◽  
Richard E. Major ◽  
Mitchell B. Lyons ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Bird Diversity ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Urban Greenspaces ◽  
Avian Biodiversity ◽  
Web App ◽  
The Web

Urbanisation is altering local flora and fauna, but urban greenspaces can provide refugia for a variety of taxa. However, we often lack basic biodiversity information (e.g., species richness) for these urban greenspaces. Citizen science projects are continuously improving our understanding of ecology at broad temporal and spatial scales. But, many conservation-relevant decisions are idiosyncratic and made at small management scales (e.g., local government). Given a general bias of citizen science data towards areas with large human populations, citizen scientists are best placed to contribute to improving our understanding of the biodiversity within cities and urban greenspaces. We introduce the Greenspace Bird Calculator: a web-app aimed at enhancing our collective knowledge of bird diversity in urban greenspaces. Users of the web-app could be land managers seeking to understand the bird diversity in the greenspaces they manage. It is built in a reproducible workflow, allowing anyone to delineate a greenspace and submit it to the web-app administrator, receiving an output comprising the greenspace’s total bird diversity. The Greenspace Bird Calculator web-app provides an automated tool to utilise existing eBird citizen science data to calculate species richness for urban greenspaces globally. Critically, the GBC web-app statistically assesses available data that otherwise would be unlikely to be considered by decision-makers. This web-app is an example of the evolution of citizen science, whereby the data collected has been analysed to allow accessible interpretation and inclusion into urban greenspace management and planning.

scholarly journals Assessing the reliability of avian biodiversity measures of urban greenspaces using eBird citizen science data

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey T. Callaghan ◽  
Mitchell B. Lyons ◽  
John M. Martin ◽  
Richard E. Major ◽  
Richard T. Kingsford
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Urban Greenspaces ◽  
Avian Biodiversity

Mismatched spatial scales can limit the utility of citizen science data for estimating wildlife‐habitat relationships

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javan M. Bauder ◽  
Alyson M. Cervantes ◽  
Alexandra C. Avrin ◽  
Laura S. Whipple ◽  
Morgan J. Farmer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Wildlife Habitat ◽  
Science Data

Heterogeneous urban green areas are bird diversity hotspots: insights using continental-scale citizen science data

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1231-1246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey T. Callaghan ◽  
Gilad Bino ◽  
Richard E. Major ◽  
John M. Martin ◽  
Mitchell B. Lyons ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Bird Diversity ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Urban Green ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Urban Green Areas ◽  
Green Areas

Citizen science data accurately predicts expert-derived species richness at a continental scale when sampling thresholds are met

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 1323-1337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey T. Callaghan ◽  
J. Dale Roberts ◽  
Alistair G. B. Poore ◽  
Ross A. Alford ◽  
Hal Cogger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Continental Scale

scholarly journals Pyrodiversity promotes avian diversity over the decade following forest fire

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1840) ◽  
pp. 20161703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan W. Tingley ◽  
Viviana Ruiz-Gutiérrez ◽  
Robert L. Wilkerson ◽  
Christine A. Howell ◽  
Rodney B. Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Fire Ecology ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Fire Severity ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Bird Diversity ◽  
Community Model ◽  
Avian Biodiversity ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Wildfire Regimes

An emerging hypothesis in fire ecology is that pyrodiversity increases species diversity. We test whether pyrodiversity—defined as the standard deviation of fire severity—increases avian biodiversity at two spatial scales, and whether and how this relationship may change in the decade following fire. We use a dynamic Bayesian community model applied to a multi-year dataset of bird surveys at 1106 points sampled across 97 fires in montane California. Our results provide strong support for a positive relationship between pyrodiversity and bird diversity. This relationship interacts with time since fire, with pyrodiversity having a greater effect on biodiversity at 10 years post-fire than at 1 year post-fire. Immediately after fires, patches of differing burn severities hold similar bird communities, but over the ensuing decade, bird assemblages within patches of contrasting severities differentiate. When evaluated at the scale of individual fires, fires with a greater heterogeneity of burn severities hold substantially more species. High spatial heterogeneity in severity, sometimes called ‘mixed-severity fire', is a natural part of wildfire regimes in western North America, but may be jeopardized by climate change and a legacy of fire suppression. Forest management that encourages mixed-severity fire may be critical for sustaining biodiversity across fire-prone landscapes.

scholarly journals Modeling Avian Full Annual Cycle Distribution and Population Trends with Citizen Science Data

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fink ◽  
Tom Auer ◽  
Alison Johnston ◽  
Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez ◽  
Wesley M. Hochachka ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Relative Abundance ◽  
Annual Cycle ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Spatiotemporal Resolution ◽  
Neotropical Migrant ◽  
Mobile Species ◽  
Animal Populations

AbstractInformation on species’ distributions and abundances, and how these change over time are central to the study of the ecology and conservation of animal populations. This information is challenging to obtain at relevant scales across range-wide extents for two main reasons. First, local and regional processes that affect populations vary throughout the year and across species’ ranges, requiring fine-scale, year-round information across broad — sometimes hemispheric — spatial extents. Second, while citizen science projects can collect data at these scales, using these data requires appropriate analysis to address known sources of bias. Here we present an analytical framework to address these challenges and generate year-round, range-wide distributional information using citizen science data. To illustrate this approach, we apply the framework to Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina), a long-distance Neotropical migrant and species of conservation concern, using data from the citizen science project eBird. We estimate occurrence and relative abundance with enough spatiotemporal resolution to support inference across a range of spatial scales throughout the annual cycle. Additionally, we generate intra-annual estimates of the range, intra-annual estimates of the associations between species and the local environment, and inter-annual trends in relative abundance. This is the first example of an analysis to capture intra- and inter-annual distributional dynamics across the entire range of a broadly distributed, highly mobile species.

scholarly journals A continental measure of urbanness predicts avian response to local urbanization

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Thomas Callaghan ◽  
Richard E. Major ◽  
William K. Cornwell ◽  
Ailstair G. B. Poore ◽  
John Wilshire ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Environmental Parameters ◽  
Local Scale ◽  
Systematic Sampling ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Specific Variation ◽  
Species Specific

Understanding species-specific relationships with their environment is essential for ecology, biogeography, and conservation biology. Moreover, understanding how these relationships change with spatial scale is critical to mitigating potential threats to biodiversity. But methods which measure inter-specific variation in responses to environmental parameters, generalizable across multiple spatial scales, are lacking. We used broad-scale citizen science data, over a continental scale, integrated with remotely-sensed products, to produce a measure of response to urbanization for a given species at a continental-scale. We then compared these responses to modelled responses to urbanization at a local-scale, based on systematic sampling within a series of small cities. For 49 species which had sufficient data for modelling, we found a significant relationship (R2 = 0.51) between continental-scale urbanness and local-scale urbanness. Our results suggest that continental-scale responses are representative of small-scale responses to urbanization. We also found that relatively few citizen science observations (~250) are necessary for reliable estimates of continental-scale urban scores to predict local-scale response to urbanization. Our method of producing species-specific urban scores is robust and can be generalized to other taxa and other environmental variables with relative ease.

scholarly journals Comparisons of Citizen Science Data-Gathering Approaches to Evaluate Urban Butterfly Diversity

Insects ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Prudic ◽  
Jeffrey Oliver ◽  
Brian Brown ◽  
Elizabeth Long
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Relative Effectiveness ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Butterfly Species ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
Malaise Traps

By 2030, ten percent of earth’s landmass will be occupied by cities. Urban environments can be home to many plants and animals, but surveying and estimating biodiversity in these spaces is complicated by a heterogeneous built environment where access and landscaping are highly variable due to human activity. Citizen science approaches may be the best way to assess urban biodiversity, but little is known about their relative effectiveness and efficiency. Here, we compare three techniques for acquiring data on butterfly (Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera) species richness: trained volunteer Pollard walks, Malaise trapping with expert identification, and crowd-sourced iNaturalist observations. A total of 30 butterfly species were observed; 27 (90%) were recorded by Pollard walk observers, 18 (60%) were found in Malaise traps, and 22 (73%) were reported by iNaturalist observers. Pollard walks reported the highest butterfly species richness, followed by iNaturalist and then Malaise traps during the four-month time period. Pollard walks also had significantly higher species diversity than Malaise traps.

New approaches to zoology: Plenary 3

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-491
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Plenary Session ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Tasmanian Devil ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Urban Greenspaces ◽  
Avian Biodiversity ◽  
Acoustic Recording

Following the third session of the forum, we held a question and answer session facilitated by Paul Willis. The presentations covered by this plenary session were: Citizen science for turtles: Risk, potentials and successes (Claudia Santori, University of Sydney)Unleashing the potential of citizen science for NSW (Erin Roger, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage)How social media can create impacts for research (Paul Willis, Media Engagement Services)A citizen-driven tool to help monitor avian biodiversity in urban greenspaces of Sydney (Corey Callagham, University of New South Wales)Where the wild things go: a new epoch for animal biotelemetry (Peggy Newman, Atlas of Living Australia) The posters covered by this plenary session were: From scats to traps: how scat samples paved the way for future research (Rebecca Gooley, University of Sydney)Characterising the diet of Tasmanian devils introduced to an offshore island (Elspeth Mclennan, University of Sydney)What we can do with poo: studying the gut microbiome of the endangered Tasmanian devil (Rowena Chong, University of Sydney)Using passive acoustic recording and automated call identification to survey koalas in the southern forests of New South Wales (Brad Law, NSW Department of Primary Industries)

Avian monitoring – comparing structured and unstructured citizen science

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey T. Callaghan ◽  
John M. Martin ◽  
Richard E. Major ◽  
Richard T. Kingsford
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Community Composition ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Diversity Indices ◽  
Urban Greenspace ◽  
Shannon Diversity ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Urban Greenspaces

Context Citizen science is increasingly used to collect biodiversity data to inform conservation management, but its validity within urban greenspaces remains largely unresolved. Aims To assess the validity of eBird data for generating biodiversity estimates within an urban greenspace. Methods We compared data from structured avian surveys with eBird data at an urban greenspace in Sydney during 2012–16, using species richness and Shannon diversity indices. We also compared community composition, using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and dissimilarities using non-parametric MANOVA. Key results Structured surveys had a lower overall species richness (80 versus 116) and Shannon diversity (3.64 versus 3.94) than eBird data, but we found no significant differences when using years as replicates. After standardising the richness and diversity indices by time spent surveying in a given year, structured surveys produced significantly higher biodiversity estimates. Further, when grouped into species occupying different broad habitats, there were no significant differences in waterbird or landbird species richness, or in Shannon diversity between data sources. Conclusions The most likely explanation for the larger magnitudes of the biodiversity indices from the eBird data is the increase in effort manifested in the number of observers, time spent surveying and spatial coverage. This resulted in increased detection of uncommon species, which in turn accounted for a significant difference (R2 = 0.21, P = 0.015) in overall community composition measured by the two methods. Implications Our results highlight the opportunities provided by eBird data as a useful tool for land managers for monitoring avian communities in urban areas.

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