Long-term and large-scale multispecies dataset tracking population changes of common European breeding birds
Vojtěch Brlík, Eva Šilarová, Jana Škorpilová, Hany Alonso, Marc Anton, Ainārs Auniņš, Zoltán Benkő, Gilles Biver, Malte Busch, Tomasz Chodkiewicz, Przemysław Chylarecki, Dick Coombes, Elisabetta de Carli, Juan Carlos del Moral, Antoine Derouaux, Virginia Escandell, Daniel Palm Eskildsen, Benoît Fontaine, Ruud Foppen, Anna Gamero, Richard D. Gregory, Sarah Harris, Sergi Herrando, Iordan Hristov, Magne Husby, Christina Ieronymidou, Frédéric Jiquet, John Atle Kålås, Johannes Kamp, Primož Kmecl, Petras Kurlavičius, Aleksi Lehikoinen, Lesley Lewis, Åke Lindström, Aris Manolopoulos, David Carreras Martí, Dario Massimino, Charlotte Moshøj, Renno Nellis, David G. Noble, Alain Paquet, Jean‐Yves Paquet, Danae Portolou, Iván Ramírez, Cindy Redel, Jiří Reif, Jozef Ridzoň, Hans Schmid, Benjamin Seaman, L. Silva, Leo Soldaat, Svetoslav Spasov, Anna Staneva, Tibor Szép, Guido Tellini Florenzano, Norbert Teufelbauer, Sven Trautmann, Tom van der Meij, A. van Strien, Chris van Turnhout, Glenn Vermeersch, Zdeněk Vermouzek, Thomas Vikstrøm, Petr Voříšek, Anne Weiserbs, Alena Klvaňová
Abstract
Around fifteen thousand fieldworkers annually count breeding birds using standardized protocols in 28 European countries. The observations are collected by using country-specific and standardized protocols, validated, summarized and finally used for the production of continent-wide annual and long-term indices of population size changes of 170 species. Here, we present the database and provide a detailed summary of the methodology used for fieldwork and calculation of the relative population size change estimates. We also provide a brief overview of how the data are used in research, conservation and policy. We believe this unique database, based on decades of bird monitoring alongside the comprehensive summary of its methodology, will facilitate and encourage further use of the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme results.