EBBA Live Farmland: whole involvement and first maps

The first phase of the project is developed in the context of the EU-funded EUROPABON project and attempts to update EBBA2 maps of farmland birds (period 2013–17) with maps based on PECBMS data (2018–23). The eastern half of Europe is not included in this phase of the project. All EBBA2 and PECBMS national coordinators and data providers included in the study area received the project very positively, and we produced the first very preliminary maps.

Preliminary map (below) shows the data of observed 50-km occurrence of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus during the breeding season for the EBBA Live Farmland (data from 2018–21) as compared to its EBBA2 distribution (2013–17). At this moment, EBBA Live Farmland data come from PECBMS site-level data only; in other words, grey and blue squares correspond to those in which the species has been observed in at least one of the PECBMS monitoring plots in the period 2018–21. This is an ongoing project, and the map is far from final yet. PECBMS national coordinators are asked to validate their data to exclude records of potential migrants and non-breeding birds in the site-level data online tool. These validations are still ongoing for some countries. Most of the orange squares correspond to gaps in coverage by PECBMS compared to the EBBA2 period. Part of these gaps is related to the species’ scarcity (e.g. areas in northern and western Europe). Still, the overall situation in the southeast rather reflects low data availability in the PECBMS site-level data set for the period 2018–21. In some countries, new updates in PECBMS site-level data and the mobilisation of complementary sources of monitoring data will both contribute to improving the coverage shown in this preliminary map.

During the last months, the project has received the enthusiastic participation of the EBCC community. Many thanks to all!