Systematic atlasing in Hessequa – Report on the first cycle of seasonal monitoring

Les Underhill,Johan Van Rooyen

doi:10.15641/bo.933

Abstract

Bird atlasing in the Hessequa region of the Western Cape has progressed beyond mapping to monitoring. During a three-year period within 2014/17, the U3A Stilbaai Bird Group upgraded the distribution maps using a strategy which aimed to even out coverage per grid cell, and achieve minimum mapping standards. In the two-year period December 2017 to November 2019, the group implemented a new strategy that would result in each of the 75 pentads in the Hessequa Atlas Area being atlased in each of the four seasons over a two-year period. Using a chessboard pattern to split the 75 pentads into two sets, the first set was atlased in summer and winter in the first year and autumn and spring of the second year. The second set was atlased in autumn and spring of the first year, and summer and winter of the second year. This paper reports the successful completion of the first monitoring cycle.

Highlights

Systematic atlasing in Hessequa – Report The Second Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2) started in on the first cycle of seasonal monitoringJuly 2007, with the objective of mapping the distributions of bird species in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland
Overall numbers of full-protocol SABAP2 checklists per pentad in the Hessequa Atlas minimum number of checklists per pentad was eight, Region from the start of the bird atlas in July 2007 to November 2019 . the maximum was 125 in pentad 3420_2120, and 28 pentads had more than 10 checklists (Figure 3)
In each of the two years of the first monitoring cycle (December 2017 to November 2019) the targets of 170 checklists per year in the designated pentads were achieved by atlasers of the U3A Stilbaai Bird

Summary

Introduction

Systematic atlasing in Hessequa – Report The Second Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2) started in on the first cycle of seasonal monitoring. 2007, with the objective of mapping the distributions of bird species in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. SABAP2 is one of the longest running bird atlas projects ever, and the emphasis has shifted from the project being a snapshot of bird distributions at a point in time to a project which is measuring how distributions are changing in time. The initial focus on mapping in SABAP2 has shifted to a focus on monitoring (Underhill et al 2017).

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion