Swedish Bird Survey: Swedish waterbird census (January)

Sampling event
Latest version published by Department of Biology, Lund University on Dec 20, 2024 Department of Biology, Lund University

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 48,658 records in English (7 MB) - Update frequency: annually
Metadata as an EML file download in English (17 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (15 KB)

Description

The Swedish waterbird census in January (Svensk sjöfågelinventering (januari)) was started in 1967 as part of the international midwinter census of waterbirds coordinated by Wetlands International. The winter count of waterbirds is therefore one of the longest running surveys of Swedish birds. It is a valuable tool for monitoring the changes in the wintering populations of waterbirds in Sweden. It also provides good information of the wintering distribution of most of the species.The Swedish waterbird census (January) is one of several schemes within the Swedish Bird Survey, run by the Department of Biology at Lund University. The surveys are with a few exceptions carried out by volunteer ornithologists. The survey is mainly financed by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, but smaller contributions come from the county administrative boards and BirdLife Sverige. The results from the survey are reported to Wetlands International.In this dataset, some information is placed in the table ExtendedMeasurementOrFacts (eMoF), which is part of the Source Archive available to download directly from the dataset’s page on gbif.org. The Source Archive contains the data exactly as uploaded to gbif (verbatim). Should you choose to download the dataset as GBIF Annotated Archive instead, the data has been interpreted and quality controlled by gbif, but, the data in the eMoF will not be included, as the eMoF extension is not yet supported by gbif.

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 48,658 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.

Event (core)
48658
ExtendedMeasurementOrFact 
329073
Occurrence 
193509

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:

Haas F, Jönsson A (2024). Swedish Bird Survey: Swedish waterbird census (January). Version 1.0. Department of Biology, Lund University. Samplingevent dataset. https://www.gbif.se/ipt/resource?r=lu_ssij&v=1.0

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Department of Biology, Lund University. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 5c80f69a-46be-4269-8606-19ffc8b971e1.  Department of Biology, Lund University publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Sweden.

Keywords

Samplingevent

Contacts

Fredrik Haas
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • PhD, Researcher
Lund University
  • Ecology building, Kontaktvägen 10
22362 Lund
SE
Annelie Jönsson
  • Metadata Provider
  • PhD, Researcher
Lund University
  • Ecology building, Kontaktvägen 10
22362 Lund
SE
Mathieu Blanchet

Geographic Coverage

All data is collected within Sweden.

Bounding Coordinates South West [55.336, 10.957], North East [69.06, 24.167]

Taxonomic Coverage

All species within the following groups are surveyed: Ducks and swans (Anatidae) Grebes (Podicipedidae) Divers (Gaviidae) Auks (Alcidae) Cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae) Herons (Ardeidae) Waders (Charadriidae, Scolopacidae) (since 2017) The following species are also included in the survey: Eurasian coot (Fulica atra) Common moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) (since 2021) Northern gannet (Morus bassanus) (since 2020) All observed individuals of the above mentioned species are counted.

Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Chordata (Chordates)
Class Aves (Birds)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 1966-01-16 / 2023-02-27

Project Data

No Description available

Title Svensk Fågeltaxering
Funding The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency supports the Swedish Bird Survey.
Study Area Description Sweden

The personnel involved in the project:

Martin Green
  • Author
Fredrik Haas
  • Author

Sampling Methods

Three different methods can be used to survey a counting sector: surveying from land, boat or aeroplane. Surveying from land is the standard and most commonly used method. For large counting sectors the surveyor has to use multiple vantage points. Ideally the whole sector should be scanned for birds, but in many cases this is not possible due to parts being e.g. obscured by islands or unreachable for other reasons. In periods, boat-based counts have been carried out to cover areas not visible from land. To cover large areas not visible from the mainland, aerial surveys with professional observers have occasionally been conducted. Regardless of method, all observed individuals of the species included in the survey should be counted. The surveyed counting sectors vary in size from 0,01 to 300 km2.

Study Extent Geography and habitat: All observations are registered on counting sectors. The entire Swedish coastline is divided into ca 3100 such sectors, ca 2300 of which have been surveyed in January. In the inland, small lakes become sectors of their own while large lakes, as well as streams and rivers, are each split into several sectors. At present almost 1400 inland sectors have been surveyed in January. It is possible for surveyors to create new inland counting sectors, as well as start previously not surveyed coastal sectors, provided the intention is to survey them for several years. The waterbird census in January and September are using the same system of counting sectors. Timing and frequency: The survey should in general be carried out once in the middle of January, but a sector is allowed to be censused more than once in a given year if different methods are used (see below). The exact survey dates are decided and notified by the project management every year. The time taken to survey a sector depends on the size of the sector and on the abundance and distribution of birds.
Quality Control Data is checked and validated by the project leaders, specifically species identity, numbers and geographical location. Confidence in the data is good.

Method step description:

  1. See sampling description.

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Gaget, E., Ovaskainen, O., Bradter, U., Haas, F., Jonas, L., Johnston, A., Langendoen, T., Lehikoinen, A. S., Pärt, T., Pavón-Jordán, D., Sandercock, B. K., Soultan, A. & Brommer, J. E., 2024. Changes in waterbird occurrence and abundance at their northern range boundaries in response to climate warming: importance of site area and protection status. (E-pub ahead of print) In: Animal Conservation.
  2. Gaget, E., Johnston, A., Pavón-Jordán, D., Lehikoinen, A. S., Sandercock, B. K., Soultan, A., Božič, L., Clausen, P., Devos, K., Domsa, C., Encarnação, V., Faragó, S., Fitzgerald, N., Frost, T., Gaudard, C., Gosztonyi, L., Haas, F., Hornman, M., Langendoen, T. & Ieronymidou, C. & 15 others, , 2022. Protected area characteristics that help waterbirds respond to climate warming. Conservation Biology 36, 4.
  3. Gaget, E., Pavón-Jordán, D., Johnston, A., Lehikoinen, A., Hochachka, W. M., Sandercock, B. K., Soultan, A., Azafzaf, H., Bendjedda, N., Bino, T., Božič, L., Clausen, P., Dakki, M., Devos, K., Domsa, C., Encarnação, V., Erciyas-Yavuz, K., Faragó, S., Frost, T. & Gaudard, C. & 30 others, , 2021. Benefits of protected areas for nonbreeding waterbirds adjusting their distributions under climate warming. Conservation Biology 35: 834-845.

Additional Metadata

Important information for potential users of the Swedish waterbird census (January) data: 1. The Swedish waterbird census (January) started officially in 1967, but the dataset also contains data from the pilot study in 1966. 2. In 1973 the midwinter count was complemented by a September count of resting migrating birds in the same counting sectors (Swedish Bird Survey: Swedish waterbird count (September)). 3. The data shown in this Darwin core archive are, for each species, the sum of all individuals within the counting sector during a visit. Note that some sectors are surveyed twice, but with different methods, in some years. 4. Null visits and zero observations: Users of the data have to construct zero data for each species themselves. The occurrence table contains observations of species that were actually present at the surveyed sites, but the surveyor would have looked for all species that are included in the survey design. For visits to sites where no observations were made at all (when such null visits exist), the occurrence table also includes one zero observation with vernacularName set to "SpeciesIncludedInSurvey", and occurrenceStatus set to "Absent". This is to ensure that information about surveyor is included in the DwC-A also for these events. Additionally, information about whether a visit is a null visit (i.e. true = no survey species observed) or not (i.e. false = one or more survey species observed) is included in the ”extended measurement or fact table” (noObservations). 5. The coordinates supplied are for the central point of each counting sector.

Purpose National environmental monitoring of waterbirds.
Alternative Identifiers https://www.gbif.se/ipt/resource?r=lu_ssij