The EuroBirdPortal: current state of the project and its outputs

Abstract

The EuroBirdPortal (EBP) project combines the data collected by the different online bird portals oper- ating in Europe. These portals aim mainly to obtain year-round data from the relatively unstructured but intensive and widespread activities of birdwatchers, collecting vast amounts of data that offer great potential to better understand the temporal and spatial distribution of birds. All in all, the portals contrib- uting to the EBP have collected more than 445 million bird records since 2010. In 2020 alone, 56 million bird records were collected and the annual figure keeps increasing by c. 14% year after year. Data is also increasing qualitatively. Currently, 34% of the whole EBP comes from complete or fixed lists and, overall, the submission of lists is increasing by c. 13% each year. On the other hand, more and more portals collect standard monitoring data (e.g. breeding bird surveys) or use specific data collection pro- tocols (e.g. nocturnal flight calls) and submit such data to the EBP correctly identified and characterized making full use of the capabilities of the EBP data standard. The availability of the data collected in near real-time is one of the main added values of the EBP project. Currently, 17 out of the 20 online systems, accounting for 99.5% of all the data collected, submit data to the EBP automatically, on a daily basis and updated up to the previous day. The EBP provides information on the patterns of bird distribution (historic and real-time) for a selection of 137 bird species through the EBP viewer (www.eurobirdpor- tal.org). Moreover, by combining its data with other continent-wide datasets (e.g. bird ringing data from EURING) the EBP is giving further applied value to the data collected by the online bird portals in such important areas as the surveillance of avian-borne diseases.