NEON breeding landbird point counts

Kate Thibault1, Abby Benson2

1 National Ecological Observatory Network, ; 2 U.S. Geological Survey, 

Corresponding author(s): Kate Thibault (kthibault@battelleecology.org)

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

NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network). Breeding landbird point counts (DP1.10003.001), RELEASE-2023. https://doi.org/10.48443/00pg-vm19. Dataset accessed from https://data.neonscience.org on August 30, 2023

Abstract

This data product contains the quality-controlled, native sampling resolution data from NEON's breeding landbird sampling crosswalked to Darwin Core. Breeding landbirds are defined as “smaller birds (usually exclusive of raptors and upland game birds) not usually associated with aquatic habitats” (Ralph et al. 1993). The breeding landbird point counts product provides records of species identification of all individuals observed during the 6-minute count period, as well as metadata which can be used to model detectability, e.g., weather, distances from observers to birds, and detection methods. The NEON point count method is adapted from the Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR): Field protocol for spatially-balanced sampling of landbird populations (Hanni et al. 2017; http://bit.ly/2u2ChUB). For additional details, see https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/DP1.10003.001.

Keywords: Samplingevent, landbirds, community, population, distance sampling, point counts

Project details

Project title: NEON
Personnel: Kate Thibault
Funding: NSF
Study area descriptions/descriptor: This sampling occurs at all NEON terrestrial sites.
Design description: Depending on the size of the site, sampling for this product occurs at either randomly distributed individual points or grids of nine points each. At larger sites, point count sampling occurs at five to ten 9-point grids, with grid centers collocated with distributed base plot centers (where plant, beetle, and/or soil sampling may also occur), if possible. At smaller sites (i.e., sites that cannot accommodate a minimum of 5 grids) point counts occur at the southwest corner (point 21) of 5-25 distributed base plots. Point counts are conducted once per breeding season at large sites and twice per breeding season at smaller sites. Point counts are six minutes long, with each minute tracked by the observer, following a two-minute settling-in period. All birds are recorded to species and sex, whenever possible, and the distance to each individual or flock is measured with a laser rangefinder, except in the case of flyovers.

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.gbif.us/resource?r=neon-breeding-landbird-abundance-and-diversity

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: United States including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Coordinates: 15°37'22.8''N and 72°17'20.4''N Latitude; 172°15'57.6''W and 38°19'12''W Longitude 

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive NEON breeding landbird point counts
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.gbif.us/archive.do?r=neon-breeding-landbird-abundance-and-diversity
Publication date of data: 2023-09-01
Language: English
Licences of use: Public Domain (CC0 1.0)

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2021-11-03
Hierarchy level: Dataset