Description
Qigu District, located on the southwest coast of Taiwan, is full of natural and artificial wetlands and therefore one of the important bird habitats along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway (EAAF). For conservation and academic purposes, Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute (TESRI) (currently known as Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute, TBRI) initiated a long-term bird monitoring project in wetlands of southwestern Qigu in 2015. In the period of April 2015 to March 2021, bird censuses were conducted once a month at 6 sampling sites, resulting in 432 sampling events and 11,533 occurrence records. A total of 100,601 individual counts, grouped into 120 species and 36 families, were recorded. The most dominant family is Ardeidae, followed by Scolopacidae, Anatidae, Recurvirostridae and Charadriidae. This project is still in progress and the dataset may be updated irregularly in the future.
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 432 records.
2 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.
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: 346c95be-c7b3-41dc-99c9-e88a18d8884a. Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility.
Keywords
samplingEvent; bird census; southwest coast of Taiwan; Important Bird Area; fish farms
Contacts
- Originator ●
- User ●
- Point Of Contact
- Originator
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator
Geographic Coverage
The dataset includes sampling events in the southwestern part of Qigu District (in Tainan City), which is located on the southwest coast of Taiwan main island.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [23.072, 120.036], North East [23.101, 120.088] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
A total of 120 bird species, spanning 36 families and 16 orders, are included in this dataset. The most dominant family (the family with the most individuals recorded) is Ardeidae (27,654), followed by Scolopacidae (15,777), Anatidae (12,074), Recurvirostridae (9,617) and Charadriidae (8,326). The Family with the most species recorded is Scolopacidae (25 species), followed by Ardeidae (11 species), Charadriidae (8 species), Anatidae (7 species) and Laridae (7 species). The most dominant species is little egret (Egretta garzetta), followed by great egret (Ardea alba), black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus), Kentish plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) and Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus).
| Class | Aves (Bird) |
|---|---|
| Order | Charadriiformes, Pelecaniformes, Passeriformes, Anseriformes, Columbiformes, Podicipediformes, Gruiformes, Accipitriformes, Galliformes, Coraciiformes, Falconiformes, Cuculiformes, Piciformes, Suliformes, Bucerotiformes, Psittaciformes |
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 2015-04-29 / 2021-03-08 |
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Project Data
For conservation and academic purposes, Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute (TESRI) (currently known as Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute, TBRI) initiated a long-term bird monitoring project in wetlands of southwestern Qigu in 2015. Since then, bird censuses have been conducted once a month at 6 sampling sites in this region. This project is still in progress.
| Title | Long-term bird monitoring project in Qigu wetlands |
|---|---|
| Identifier | LTBMQG |
| Funding | Funding from the Endemic Species Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, R.O.C. (Taiwan). |
| Study Area Description | The study area of this project is the southwestern part of Qigu District (in Tainan City), which is located on the southwest coast of Taiwan (23.07206°N to 23.10149°N, 120.03645°E to 120.08831°E). The landscape of this region is composed of various natural and artificial wetlands (e.g. fish farms), and therefore provides suitable habitats for waterbirds, especially those migrating along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway (EAAF). Based on the weather data of the past 10 years (2013-2022) from the Qigu weather station (23.14719°N, 120.08619°E), the average temperature here is 24.1°C. The month with lowest temperature is January (17.3°C), while the month with highest temperature is July (29.2°C). The average annual precipitation is 1510.2 mm, and the seasonality of precipitation is typically obvious. From May to September, the monthly precipitation is above 160 mm, but it declines to less than 80 mm from October to April. |
| Design Description | This project is meant to establish baseline data of the avian community in Qigu wetlands by means of long-term periodic bird censuses at selected sampling sites. |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Principal Investigator
Sampling Methods
The monthly bird censuses at LHF, NFF, EFF and QGL were conducted using transect method (as shown in column “samplingProtocol” of the DwC Event Core). These transects are usually trails beside fish farms (at LHF, NFF, EFF) or along the levee (at QGL), with the length ranging from 0.826 km to 3.129 km. In contrast, monthly censuses at AFR and AFF were conducted using counting flocks method, which means counting flocks of birds within a predefined area. The sampling areas of AFR and AFF are 9.8 ha and 22.4 ha, respectively. Bird censuses were all conducted during daytime (mostly between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.), with no strict limitation on the starting time and duration of each census.
| Study Extent | Six representative sites within southwestern Qigu District were selected as the sampling sites of this monitoring project (as shown in column “locality” of the DwC Occurrence Extension), including Lighthouse Fish Farms (LHF), North Fish Farms (NFF), East Fish Farms (EFF), Qigu Levee (QGL), American Fish Farm Ruins (AFR) and American Fish Farms (AFF). Bird censuses were conducted once a month at these six sampling sites from April 2015 to March 2021. The main habitat type within these sampling sites are fish farms for clams (Meretrix lusoria) or milkfish (Chanos chanos), while the habitat environment still slightly differs between sites. The centroid coordinates (WGS84) of 6 sampling sites: LHF: 23.09003°N, 120.04050°E; NFF: 23.08897°N, 120.05879°E; EFF: 23.08006°N, 120.06647°E; QGL: 23.07881°N, 120.08044°E; AFR: 23.09383°N, 120.08439°E; AFF: 23.09788°N, 120.08256°E |
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| Quality Control | All of the monthly bird censuses were carried out by 1-3 experienced and well-trained bird observers. To keep the quality steady, only 5 observers (including 2 main observers and 3 occasionally assistant observers) have been involved during the time coverage of this dataset (April 2015 to March 2021). All of the occurrence records were integrated and examined after each census. Any uncommon or abnormal records will be confirmed, and modifications will be made if necessary. The taxonomy information in this dataset is organized based on the eBird Taxonomy v2022 (Clements et al. 2022) and the 2023 TWBF Checklist of the Birds of Taiwan (Ding et al. 2023). |
Method step description:
- All of the six sampling sites and the corresponding census methods were determined at the beginning of this project. For the transect censuses (at LHF, NFF, EFF and QGL), a team of observers walked along a predefined transect and recorded the birds nearby. For the counting flocks censuses (at AFR and AFF), observers counted and recorded the birds within a predefined area, which is typically composed of several fish farms. Observers used binoculars (typically 10x42) and/or monoculars (20-60x) to detect and observe birds in all censuses, and recorded bird species as well as the number of individuals. Birds seen or heard by the observers were all recorded, except for those birds only flying through sampling area without perching or foraging behaviors. The weather condition determined by visual observation was also recorded for each census (presented as a categorical variable in the DwC Measurement or Facts Extension). Each monthly census at each of the six sampling sites is regarded as a sampling event (as shown in column “eventID” of the DwC Event Core). It should be noted that from April 2015 to around June 2018, all of the bird occurrences within a single sampling event were recorded at the same coordinate, which is the centroid coordinate of the sampling site. However, the bird occurrences were recorded at the coordinate of several distinct locations, which correspond to different sections along the transect or different districts within the site, since around June 2018 (the time points slightly differ between sampling sites). The change of recording protocol can be observed through columns “locationID”, “decimalLatitude” and “decimalLongitude” of the DwC Occurrence Extension.
Bibliographic Citations
- Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2022. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2022.
- Ding, T.-S., C.-S. Juan, R.-S. Lin, Y.-J. Tsai, J.-L. Wu, J. Wu and Y.-H. Yang. 2023. The 2023 TWBF Checklist of the Birds of Taiwan. Taiwan Wild Bird Federation. Taipei, Taiwan.
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 346c95be-c7b3-41dc-99c9-e88a18d8884a |
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| https://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=cgbs_tesri_2021 |