The Taiwan Breeding Bird Survey Data

Jerome Chie-Jen Ko1

1 Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute, 1, Mingshen East Road, 55244, Chichi Township, Taiwan

Corresponding author(s): Jerome Chie-Jen Ko (jeromeko.tw@gmail.com)

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

Ko J C (2023): The Taiwan Breeding Bird Survey Data. v1.9. Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute. Dataset/Samplingevent. https://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=bbstaiwan_dataset&v=1.9

Abstract

The Taiwan Breeding Bird Survey (BBS Taiwan) is a national monitoring project with the aim of establishing a breeding bird population index for conservation. It was established in 2009 as a citizen science project with a cross-organizational working group. The BBS Taiwan has obtained 423,119 records of bird sampling data from 480 sampling sites during the breeding season in Taiwan from 2009 to 2016.

Keywords: Samplingevent, Aves, distance sampling, population index, citizen science, Samplingevent

Project details

Project title: 臺灣繁殖鳥類大調查
Personnel: 明剛 蔡 Tsai

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=bbstaiwan_dataset

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: A total of 313 bird species from 62 families are recorded, including all 27 endemic bird species on the island, and also introduced bird species.
Taxonomic ranks
Class: Ave
Common names: Bird

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: The records in the BBS Taiwan dataset are located on the main island of Taiwan and also the Lanyu Island off the east coast. Environmental gradients of the sampling locations spans over the elevation zone from 0-3,900m ASL, and across habitats from human-dominated urban landscapes to primary forests in the remote mountain areas. Each sampling site was composed of 6-10 survey points with a 100 meter radius. Coverage of sampling sites is expected to increase in the future.
Coordinates: 21°48'36''N and 26°30'0''N Latitude; 118°10'12''E and 122°11'24''E Longitude 

Temporal coverage: March 1, 2009 - July 31, 2016

Methods

Method step description: BBS Taiwan applied a stratified random sampling scheme for an initial set of 450 sampling sites aimed at covering 5% of the c.f. 36,000 km2 area of the Taiwan Island. Nighty-one stratums, defined by 41 eco-regions (Su 1992) combined with three different elevation zones (0-1,000m, 1,000-2,500m, 2,500-4,000m) where used in this progress. An additional “customized” set of samplings sites were selected manually by surveyors at locations where no pre-selected sites covers. To date, all types of sampling sites now reach approximately a number of 750 sites. All sampling sites were available to be adopted by volunteered surveyors each year, while encouraging the same surveyor to adopt the same sampling site as long as possible. Each sampling sites were surveyed twice a year, which, in combination with the 6 – 10 survey points per site, gives each site a minimum sampling effort of 12 times. The above sampling effort ensures the likelihood of detecting 80% of species present and keeping the coefficient of variance below 20 % in the breeding season within each site on Taiwan (Ding 1993, Shiu and Lee 2003). Surveys are performed within the breeding season between March and June, with sites at higher elevations surveyed in a later sequence. Surveys are conducted within four hours of sunrise on each day. Point-count method (Bibby et al. 2000) with a 6-minute stop time were conducted on each survey point, ensuring the effort to detect a minimum of 80% of the species at each site (Ding 1993, Shiu and Lee 2003). We record every bird individuals detected, regardless of migratory status and either sighted or heard. For each bird record, the period of detection time (0-3 minutes, 3-6 minutes, supplementary which are records beyond the 6-minute stop time), horizontal distance to the observer (0-25m, 25-100m, >100m., flyover), and formation of flock with more than five individuals were recorded. For each survey point, the main-habitat, sub-habitat, presence of water-bodies, weather condition, starting time were recorded. Habitat were classified by surveyors on field.
Study extent description: Sampling sites of BBS Taiwan were selected to cover all major habitats on the main island of Taiwan and also the surrounding islands. Currently, the dataset contains 480 sampling sites, which includes a total of 4,138 survey points. The major habitat types covered by these sampling sites include forest (48%), farmland (24%), urban (12%), wetlands (7%) and grasslands (6%).
Sampling description: BBS Taiwan adopts the point-count method (Bibby et al. 2000) with a 6 minutes count duration per point.
Quality control description: Efforts to maintain the quality of data were implemented before and after the survey. Before the survey, training workshops with field excursions were held to ensure participants fully understand the survey methods. After the data were submitted by the surveyors, location of survey points, correctness of the time period, distance, flock notes were reviewed. Filters for rare or easily-misidentified species and unusual high counts of numbers were also used to detect possibly error records. The alerted records were then double-checked with surveyors, and doubtful records were deleted from the release version of the dataset. The taxonomic system follows the Checklist of Birds of Taiwan maintained by the Bird Record Committee of the Chinese Wild Bird Federation (Ding et al. 2017). The dataset described and provided here is essentially the complete set of the collected raw data.

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive The Taiwan Breeding Bird Survey Data
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.taibif.tw/archive.do?r=bbstaiwan_dataset
Publication date of data: 2023-08-11
Language: English
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2017-07-13
Hierarchy level: Dataset

References
Bibby CJ, Burgess ND, Hill DA, Mustoe SH (2000) Bird census techniques, 2nd edn. Academic, London
Ding, T-S (1993) Avian community ecology of mature forests on Mt. Yushan. Master Thesis. National Taiwan University, Taipei (in Chinese, English abstract)
Ding, T-S, Juan C-S, Lin R-S, Pan C-Y, Tsai Y-J, Wu J, Yang Y-H (2017) The 2017 CWBF Checklist of the Birds of Taiwan. Chinese Wild Bird Federation, Taipei, Taiwan.
Shiu H-J, Lee P-F (2003) Assessing avian point-count duration and sample size using species accumulation functions. Zool Stud 42:357–367
Su, H-J (1992) A geographical data organization system for the botanical inventory of Taiwan. Botany Institute, Academia Sinica Monograph Series 12:23-36.