To boldly go where no volunteer has gone before: Predicting volunteer activity to prioritize surveys at the landscape scale

Diversity and Distributions

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2013, Pages 465-480

  Tulloch, Ayesha I T ^a   Mustin, Karen ^a   Possingham, Hugh P ^a   Szabo, Judit K ^b   Wilson, Kerrie A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

^b CHARLES DARWIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Biological atlas; Citizen science; Conservation planning; Resource allocation; Species distribution modelling; Volunteer monitoring

Indexed keywords

ATLAS; BIRD; CONSERVATION PLANNING; DATA ACQUISITION; HABITAT TYPE; PROBABILITY; PROTECTED AREA; SAMPLING; SURVEYING;

AUSTRALIA; WESTERN AUSTRALIA;

AVES;

EID: 84875077878     PISSN: 13669516     EISSN: 14724642     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2012.00947.x     Document Type: Article

References (94)

1. Balmford, A., Green, R.E. & Jenkins, M. (2003) Measuring the changing state of nature. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 18, 326-330.
2. Balmford, A., Crane, P., Dobson, A., Green, R.E. & Mace, G.M. (2005) The 2010 challenge: data availability, information needs and extraterrestrial insights. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B Biological Sciences, 360, 221-228.
3. Barrett, G. (2000) Birds on farms: ecological management for agricultural sustainability. Wingspan Supplement, 10, 1-16.
4. Barrett, G.W., Silcocks, A., Barry, S., Cunningham, R. & Poulter, R. (2003) The New Atlas of Australian Birds. Birds Australia, Melbourne, Vic.
5. Barry, S. & Elith, J. (2006) Error and uncertainty in habitat models. Journal of Applied Ecology, 43, 413-423.
6. Bas, Y., Devictor, V., Moussus, J.-P. & Jiguet, F. (2008) Accounting for weather and time-of-day parameters when analysing count data from monitoring programs. Biodiversity and Conservation, 17, 3403-3416.
7. Battersby, J.E. & Greenwood, J.J.D. (2004) Monitoring terrestrial mammals in the UK: past, present and future, using lessons from the bird world. Mammal Review, 34, 3-29.
8. Beard, J.S. (1980a) A new phytogeographic map of Western Australia. Research notes of the Western Australian Herbarium, 3, 37-58.
9. Beard, J.S. (1980b). Vegetation Survey of Western Australia. Western Australia 1:1 000 000 Vegetation Series. Swan Sheet 7, University of Western Australia Press, with support of the Interim Council for the Australian Biological Resources Study, Nedlands, WA.
10. Boakes, E.H., McGowan, P.J.K., Fuller, R.A., Chang-qing, D., Clark, N.E., O'Connor, K. & Mace, G.M. (2010) Distorted views of biodiversity: spatial and temporal bias in species occurrence data. PLoS Biology, 8, e1000385.
11. Booth, J.E., Gaston, K.J., Evans, K.L. & Armsworth, P.R. (2011) The value of species rarity in biodiversity recreation: a birdwatching example. Biological Conservation, 144, 2728-2732.
12. Botts, E.A., Erasmus, B.F.N. & Alexander, G.J. (2010) Geographic sampling bias in the South African frog atlas project: implications for conservation planning. Biodiversity and Conservation, 20, 119-139.
13. Brotons, L., Herrando, S. & Pla, M. (2007) Updating bird species distribution at large spatial scales: applications of habitat modelling to data from long-term monitoring programs. Diversity and Distributions, 13, 276-288.
14. Burnham, K.P. & Anderson, D.R. (2002) Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: A Practical Information-Theoretic Approach. Springer-Verlag. New York.
15. Carlson, M. & Schmiegelow, F. (2002) Cost-effective sampling design applied to large-scale monitoring of boreal birds. Conservation Ecology, 6, 11. Available at: http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss2/ art11(accessed 18 July 2012).
16. Carvalho, S.B., Brito, J.C., Pressey, R.L., Crespo, E. & Possingham, H.P. (2010) Simulating the effects of using different types of species distribution data in reserve selection. Biological Conservation, 143, 426-438.
17. Cunningham, R.B., Lindenmayer, D.B., Nix, H.A. & Lindenmayer, B.D. (1999) Quantifying observer heterogeneity in bird counts. Australian Journal of Ecology, 24, 270-277.
18. Dale, V.H. & Beyeler, S.C. (2001) Challenges in the development and use of ecological indicators. Ecological Indicators, 1, 3-10.
19. Danielsen, F., Burgess, N.D., Balmford, A. et al. (2009) Local participation in natural resource monitoring: a characterization of approaches. Conservation Biology, 23, 31-42.
20. Department of Agriculture and Food (2006). Land use in Western Australia. Spatial data layer - ESRI ArcInfo surface.
21. Donald, P.F. & Fuller, R.J. (1998) Ornithological atlas data: a review of uses and limitations. Bird Study, 45, 129-145.
22. Dunn, A.M. & Weston, M.A. (2008) A review of terrestrial bird atlases of the world and their application. Emu, 108, 42-67.
23. Elith, J. & Leathwick, J.R. (2009) Species distribution models: ecological explanation and prediction across space and time. Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics, 40, 677-697.
24. Elith, J., Burgman, M.A. & Regan, H.M. (2002) Mapping epistemic uncertainties and vague concepts in predictions of species distribution. Ecological Modelling, 157, 313-329.
25. ESRI Inc. (2008) ArcGIS 9.3. Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. Redlands, CA.
26. Etterson, M.A., Niemi, G.J. & Danz, N.P. (2009) Estimating the effects of detection heterogeneity and overdispersion on trends estimated from avian point counts. Ecological Applications, 19, 2049-2066.
27. Field, S.A., Tyre, A.J. & Possingham, H.P. (2005) Optimizing allocation of monitoring effort under economic and observational constraints. Journal of Wildlife Management, 69, 473-482.
28. Fleishman, E. & Murphy, D.D. (2009) A realistic assessment of the indicator potential of butterflies and other charismatic taxonomic groups. Conservation Biology, 23, 1109-1116.
29. Funk, V.A. & Richardson, K.S. (2002) Systematic data in biodiversity studies: use it or lose it. Systematic Biology, 51, 303-316.
30. Garnett, S., Crowley, G. & Balmford, A. (2003) The costs and effectiveness of funding the conservation of Australian threatened Birds. BioScience, 53, 658-665.
31. Garnett, S., Szabo, J.K. & Dutton, G. (2011) The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2010. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Vic.
32. Gates, S. & Donald, P.F. (2000) Local extinction of british farmland birds and the prediction of further loss. Journal of Applied Ecology, 37, 806-820.
33. Gelman, A. & Hill, J. (2007) Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
34. Gerber, L.R., Beger, M., McCarthy, M.A. & Possingham, H.P. (2005) A theory for optimal monitoring of marine reserves. Ecology Letters, 8, 829-837.
35. Gibbons, D.W., Donald, P.F., Bauer, H.-G., Fornasari, L. & Dawson, I.K. (2007) Mapping avian distributions: the evolution of bird atlases. Bird Study, 54, 324-334.
36. Grantham, H.S., Wilson, K.A., Moilanen, A., Rebelo, T. & Possingham, H.P. (2009) Delaying conservation actions for improved knowledge: how long should we wait? Ecology Letters, 12, 293-301.
37. Guisan, A. & Zimmermann, N.E. (2000) Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology. Ecological Modelling, 135, 147-186.
38. Guisan, A., Lehmann, A., Ferrier, S., Austin, M., Overton, J.M.C., Aspinall, R. & Hastie, T. (2006) Making better biogeographical predictions of species' distributions. Journal of Applied Ecology, 43, 386-392.
39. Hampe, A. (2004) Bioclimate envelope models: what they detect and what they hide. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 13, 469-471.
40. Hauser, C.E., Pople, A.R. & Possingham, H.P. (2006) Should managed populations be monitored every year? Ecological Applications, 16, 807-819.
41. Henry, P.Y., Lengyel, S., Nowicki, P., Julliard, R., Clobert, J., Celik, T., Gruber, B., Schmeller, D., Babij, V. & Henle, K. (2008) Integrating ongoing biodiversity monitoring: potential benefits and methods. Biodiversity and Conservation, 17, 3357-3382.
42. Hopper, S.D. & Gioia, P. (2004) The Southwest Australian floristic region: evolution and conservation of a global hot spot of biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics, 35, 623-650.
43. Jones, J.P.G. (2011) Monitoring species abundance and distribution at the landscape scale. Journal of Applied Ecology, 48, 9-13.
44. Joseph, L.N., Field, S.A., Wilcox, C. & Possingham, H.P. (2006) Presence-absence versus abundance data for monitoring threatened species. Conservation Biology, 20, 1679-1687.
45. Kery, M., Spillmann, J.H., Truong, C. & Holderegger, R. (2006) How biased are estimates of extinction probability in revisitation studies? Journal of Ecology, 94, 980-986.
46. Kotze, D.J. & O'Hara, R.B. (2003) Species decline: but why? explanations of carabid beetle (coleoptera, carabidae) declines in Europe Oecologia, 135, 138-148.
47. Kuhnert, P.M., Martin, T.G. & Griffiths, S.P. (2010) A guide to eliciting and using expert knowledge in Bayesian ecological models. Ecology Letters, 13, 900-914.
48. Küper, W., Sommer, J.H., Lovett, J.C. & Barthlott, W. (2006) Deficiency in African plant distribution data - missing pieces of the puzzle. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 150, 355-368.
49. Legg, C.J. & Nagy, L. (2006) Why most conservation monitoring is, but need not be, a waste of time. Journal of Environmental Management, 78, 194-199.
50. Lindenmayer, D.B. & Likens, G.E. (2009) Adaptive monitoring: A new paradigm for long-term research and monitoring. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 24, 482-486.
51. Lindenmayer, D.B. & Likens, G.E. (2010) Effective Ecological Monitoring. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Vic.
52. Loiselle, B.A., Howell, C.A., Graham, C.H., Goerck, J.M., Brooks, T., Smith, K.G. & Williams, P.H. (2003) Avoiding pitfalls of using species distribution models in conservation planning. Conservation Biology, 17, 1591-1600.
53. Longmore, R. (1986) Atlas of Elapid Snakes of Australia. Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
54. Loyola, R.D., Oliveira-Santos, L.G.R., Almeida-Neto, M., Nogueira, D.M., Kubota, U., Diniz, J.A.F. & Lewinsohn, T.M. (2009) Integrating economic costs and biological traits into global conservation priorities for carnivores. PLoS ONE, 4, 9.
55. Margules, C.R., Austin, M.P., Mollison, D. & Smith, F. (1994) Biological models for monitoring species decline: the construction and use of data bases. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 344, 69-75.
56. Mittermeier, R.A., Myers, N., Thomsen, J.B., da Fonseca, G.A.B. & Olivieri, S. (1998) Biodiversity hotspots and major tropical wilderness areas: approaches to setting conservation priorities. Conservation Biology, 12, 516-520.
57. Moilanen, A., Wilson, K. & Possingham, H.P. (2009) Spatial Conservation Prioritization: Quantitative Methods and Computational Tools. Oxford University Press, New York.
58. Munson, M.A., Caruana, R., Fink, D., Hochachka, W.M., Iliff, M., Rosenberg, K.V., Sheldon, D., Sullivan, B.L., Wood, C. & Kelling, S. (2010) A method for measuring the relative information content of data from different monitoring protocols. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 1, 263-273.
59. Myers, N., Mittermeier, R.A., Mittermeier, C.G., da Fonseca, G.A.B. & Kent, J. (2000) Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature, 403, 853-858.
60. Osborne, P.E. & Tigar, B.J. (1992) Interpreting bird atlas data using logistic models: an example from Lesotho, southern Africa. Journal of Applied Ecology, 29, 55-62.
61. Parnell, J.A.N., Simpson, D.A., Moat, J., Kirkup, D.W., Chantaranothai, P., Boyce, P.C., Bygrave, P., Dransfield, S., Jebb, M.H.P., Macklin, J., Meade, C., Middleton, D.J., Muasya, A.M., Prajaksood, A., Pendry, C.A., Pooma, R., Suddee, S. & Wilkin, P. (2003) Plant collecting spread and densities: their potential impact on biogeographical studies in Thailand. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 193-209.
62. Parsons, H. & Major, R.E. (2004). Bird interactions in Sydney gardens: some initial findings of the Birds in Backyards program. Urban Wildlife: More Than Meets the Eye (ed. by D. Lunney and S. Burgin ), pp. 211-215. Royal Zoological Society of NSW, Mosman, NSW.
63. Pearce, J. & Ferrier, S. (2000) Evaluating the predictive performance of habitat models developed using logistic regression. Ecological Modelling, 133, 225-245.
64. Pearson, R.G., Thuiller, W., Araujo, M.B., Martinez-Meyer, E., Brotons, L., McClean, C., Miles, L., Segurado, P., Dawson, T.P. & Lees, D.C. (2006) Model-based uncertainty in species range prediction. Journal of Biogeography, 33, 1704-1711.
65. Phillips, S.J., Dudik, M., Elith, J., Graham, C.H., Lehmann, A., Leathwick, J. & Ferrier, S. (2009) Sample selection bias and presence-only distribution models: implications for background and pseudo-absence data. Ecological Applications, 19, 181-197.
66. Pomeroy, D., Tushabe, H. & Cowser, R. (2008) Bird atlases - how useful are they for conservation? Bird Conservation International, 18, S211-S222.
67. R Development Core Team (2010). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, Reference Index Version 2.11.1. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna. http://www.r-project.org (accessed 18 July 2012).
68. Rachlow, J.L. & Svancara, L.K. (2006) Prioritizing habitat for surveys of an uncommon mammal: a modeling approach applied to pygmy rabbits. Journal of Mammalogy, 87, 827-833.
69. Reddy, S. & Dávalos, L.M. (2003) Geographical sampling bias and its implications for conservation priorities in Africa. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 1719-1727.
70. Regan, H.M., Hierl, L.A., Franklin, J., Deutschman, D.H., Schmalbach, H.L., Winchell, C.S. & Johnson, B.S. (2008) Species prioritization for monitoring and management in regional multiple species conservation plans. Diversity and Distributions, 14, 462-471.
71. Rhodes, J.R., Tyre, A.J., Jonzen, N., McAlpine, C.A. & Possingham, H.P. (2006a) Optimizing presence-absence surveys for detecting population trends. Journal of Wildlife Management, 70, 8-18.
72. Rhodes, J.R., Wiegand, T., McAlpine, C.A., Callaghan, J., Lunney, D., Bowen, M. & Possingham, H.P. (2006b) Modeling species' distributions to improve conservation in semiurban landscapes: koala case study. Conservation Biology, 20, 449-459.
73. Robertson, M. & Barker, N. (2006) A technique for evaluating species richness maps generated from collections data. South African Journal of Science, 102, 78-84.
74. Robertson, M.P., Cumming, G.S. & Erasmus, B.F.N. (2010) Getting the most out of atlas data. Diversity and Distributions, 16, 363-375.
75. Romo, H., García-Barros, E. & Lobo, J.M. (2006) Identifying recorder-induced geographic bias in an Iberian butterfly database. Ecography, 29, 873-885.
76. Rondinini, C., Wilson, K.A., Boitani, L., Grantham, H. & Possingham, H.P. (2006) Tradeoffs of different types of species occurrence data for use in systematic conservation planning. Ecology Letters, 9, 1136-1145.
77. Salzer, D. & Salafsky, N. (2006) Allocating resources between taking action, assessing status, and measuring effectiveness of conservation actions. Natural Areas Journal, 26, 310-316.
78. Saunders, D.A., Hobbs, R.J. & Margules, C.R. (1991) Biological consequences of ecosystem fragmentation: a review. Conservation Biology, 5, 18-32.
79. Saunders, D.A., Hobbs, R.J. & Arnold, G.W. (1993) The Kellerberrin project on fragmented landscapes: a review of current information. Biological Conservation, 64, 185-192.
80. Schmeller, D.S., Henry, P.Y., Julliard, R., Gruber, B., Clobert, J., Dziock, F., Lengyel, S., Nowicki, P., Deri, E., Budrys, E., Kull, T., Tali, K., Bauch, B., Settele, J., Van Swaay, C., Kobler, A., Babij, V., Papastergiadou, E. & Henle, K. (2009) Advantages of volunteer-based biodiversity monitoring in Europe. Conservation Biology, 23, 307-316.
81. Silvertown, J. (2009) A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 24, 467-471.
82. Sparks, T.H., Huber, K. & Tryjanowski, P. (2008) Something for the weekend? Examining the bias in avian phenological recording International Journal of Biometeorology, 52, 505-510.
83. Sullivan, B.L., Wood, C.L., Iliff, M.J., Bonney, R.E., Fink, D. & Kelling, S. (2009) eBird: a citizen-based bird observation network in the biological sciences. Biological Conservation, 142, 2282-2292.
84. Szabo, J.K., Davy, P.J., Hooper, M.J. & Astheimer, L.B. (2007) Predicting spatio-temporal distribution for eastern Australian birds using birds Australia's atlas data: survey method, habitat and seasonal effects. Emu, 107, 89-99.
85. Szabo, J.K., Vesk, P.A., Baxter, P.W.J. & Possingham, H.P. (2011) Paying the extinction debt: woodland birds in the Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia. Emu, 111, 59-70.
86. Telfer, M.G., Preston, C.D. & Rothery, P. (2002) A general method for measuring relative change in range size from biological atlas data. Biological Conservation, 107, 99-109.
87. Tulloch, A.I.T. & Szabo, J.K. (2012) Understanding the ecology and behaviour of volunteer bird surveyors. Emu, (in press).
88. Tulloch, A., Possingham, H.P. & Wilson, K. (2011) Wise selection of an indicator for monitoring the success of management actions. Biological Conservation, 144, 141-154.
89. Underhill, L.G., Oatley, T.B. & Harrison, J.A. (1991) The role of large scale data collection projects in the study of southern African birds. Ostrich, 62, 124-148.
90. Walsh, J.C., Wilson, K.A., Benshemesh, J., Possingham, H.P., Katzner, T. & Rondeau, D. (2012) Unexpected outcomes of invasive predator control: the importance of evaluating conservation management actions. Animal Conservation, doi: 10.1111/j.1469-1795.2012.00537.x. online early.
91. Weston, M., Fendley, M., Jewell, R., Satchell, M. & Tzaros, C. (2003) Volunteers in bird conservation: Insights from the Australian threatened bird network. Ecological Management & Restoration, 4, 205-211.
92. Weston, M.A., Silcocks, A., Tzaros, C.L. & Ingwersen, D. (2006) A survey of contributors Australian bird atlassing project: demography, skills and motivation. Australian Journal on Volunteering, 11, 51-58.
93. Williams, P.H., Prance, G.T., Humphries, C.J. & Edwards, K.S. (1996) Promise and problems in applying quantitative complementary areas for representing the diversity of some Neotropical plants (families Dichapetalaceae, Lecythidaceae, Garyocaraceae, Ghrysobalanaceae and Proteaceae). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 58, 125-157.
94. Yoccoz, N.G., Nichols, J.D. & Boulinier, T. (2001) Monitoring of biological diversity in space and time. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 16, 446-453.