Data from: Time series of bird abundances, land cover and temperature from standardized breeding bird monitoring schemes (line transects and point count routes) from Norway, Sweden and Finland, for 1975-2016 ...

• Main Authors: Piirainen, Sirke, Lehikoinen, Aleksi
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2022
• Subjects: Bayesian joint species distribution models JSDMs; land bird monitoring scheme; Fennoscandia; line transect method; avian point count surveys; species range shifts; Species abundance distributions; FOS Biological sciences; Norway
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bzkh189br; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.bzkh189br

These data on bird species abundance and environmental variables were used in testing and comparing two different species distribution model validation methods that are applied to models which are used to predict the effects of climate change on species' distributions. The aim of the study was to investigate whether different validation methods give different results of the model's predictive performance and to demonstrate that validation methods based on measuring and validating a “static” pattern in distribution can assess model performance over-optimistically compared to methods based on measuring and validating a “change” in the distribution, which can assess the predictive performance more critically. ... : Bird data come from two types of surveys. Most data come from systematic national land bird monitoring surveys where volunteers survey either line transects (Finland) or a combination of line transects and point count stations (Sweden and Norway) once a year during the breeding season. Survey routes were 6 km (Finland and Norway) or 8 km (Sweden) in total length, each typically a square or rectangle, and covered the countries at approximately 20-40 km distance of each other. A smaller fraction of the data comes from more randomly located point count stations (Sweden and Norway) and line transects (Finland). The total number of individuals (Sweden) or pairs (Norway and Finland) detected was recorded per species for each route. Surveys were carried out early morning and in good weather conditions. Birds were detected by both auditory and visual cues by trained observers using standardized field protocols. If a species is not detected when slowly walking along the transect line, it is reported as absent (its ...