Description
Taiwan Wild Bird Federation Bird Records Database (TWBF Database), the first and the largest web-based biodiversity citizen science database of Taiwan, has collected a large number of birdwatching checklists provided by more than 3,000 users. From 1972 to 2017, the TWBF Database accumulated 1,853,589 bird records within 102,716 checklists, covering nearly all area and almost 90% of the 653 bird species of Taiwan Island and its outlying islands.
Data Records
The data in this sampling event 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 102,716 records.
1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
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:
Taiwan Wild Bird Federation, Lin MM, Chen WJ, Lin DL, Ko CJ, Lin RS, Ding TS (2018): Taiwan Wild Bird Federation Bird Records Database. v1.6. Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute. Dataset/Samplingevent. http://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=cwbfbrd&v=1.6
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 78fc169f-cef0-4054-88ec-9b694bcbf6e4. Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility.
Keywords
Aves; bird observations; birdwatchers; citizen science; long-term population trends; Samplingevent; Samplingevent
Contacts
- Originator
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator
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- Metadata Provider
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- Originator
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
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- Metadata Provider
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- Custodian Steward
Geographic Coverage
TWBF Database is a nationwide database which covered the island of Taiwan, its offshore islands, and surrounding seas.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [10.378, 114.365], North East [26.382, 123.594] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
A total of 586 species and 2 subspecies, as well as 16 species combinations and 3 domestic types, were recorded, covering about 90% of the bird species have been recorded in Taiwan. The classification system followed the 2018 edition of the eBird/Clements taxonomy (Clements et al. 2018).
| Class | Aves (Birds) |
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Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 1972-07-08 / 2017-04-09 |
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Project Data
Integrating the historical bird records of TWBF Database, and converting the records to eBird database format and Darwin Core.
| Title | Taiwan Wild Bird Federation Bird Records Database Integration Project |
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| Funding | Endemic Species Research Institute, Taiwan. |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Principal Investigator
- Processor
Sampling Methods
Each provided birdwatching checklist represents one sampling event. From July 8th, 1972 to April 9th, 2017, a total of 102,716 sampling events were conducted. The main sampling methods include transects, point counts, and area searches.
| Study Extent | Surveys were conducted by birdwatchers and local birdwatching societies between 1972 and 2017 throughout the land and sea under the jurisdiction of the government of the Republic of China (widely known as “Taiwan”), including Taiwan Island and its outlying islands, which are scattered across Taiwan Strait, Pacific Ocean, and the South China Sea. |
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| Quality Control | The checklists with abnormal sampling time, doubtful or overly vague spatial information, as well as uncertain species identification, had been regarded as invalid data after confirmation in multiple ways and eliminated from the publishing version. The contents of all versions during data conversion were kept to track the modifications. |
Method step description:
- During the surveys, birdwatchers detected and identified bird species with naked eyes, through binoculars and telescopes, or by listening to the bird sounds, and filled out the checklists with species, number of individuals, location, date, start time, duration, sampling protocol, and survey effort.
- Birdwatchers submitted their checklists to TWBF Database via a web form that validated the content and format of the entered records. To ensure the quality of data, each checklist was requested to at least provide the information of survey location, date, time, and the completeness of species lists (users could choose to submit a complete checklist, including all the species detected, or an incomplete checklist with only certain species they concerned).
- We obtained the raw data from TWBF database and standardized it according to the Darwin Core format. The original contents were kept as much as possible during the data conversion unless there was an obvious mistake. Most of the checklists lack precise coordinates information because the TWBF database had requested only textual descriptions of survey location for a long time. Therefore, we inferred and restored the approximate area where each event took place according to the description, then located the latitude and longitude at a vicinal bird-watching hotspot, the location with suitable habitat, or the geographical center of the area. The uncertainty of coordinate inference was within 1000 meters. For those checklists stating further details about the sampling methods, we looked into the descriptions, defined the practices as transects, point counts, or area searches, and quantified the corresponding sampling efforts with transect length, time duration, or area covered.
Bibliographic Citations
- eBird Basic Dataset. Version: EBD_relMay-2017. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. May 2017.Fang, W.-H. 2015. Commemorate the pioneer of bird occurrence database, Mr. Guo-Dong Lin. Yuhina Post 256:19-20. (in Chinese)
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 78fc169f-cef0-4054-88ec-9b694bcbf6e4 |
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| https://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=cwbfbrd |