Monitoring birds in Switzerland
The Common Chaffinch, Switzerland's most abundant species, is surveyed via the common breeding bird monitoring scheme. The population trend of the Chaffinch is calculated annually based on an average of 14 900 observations in about 250 out of 267 surveyed kilometre squares. © Marcel Burkhardt
In the 1980s, the Swiss Ornithological Institute launched a range of monitoring schemes that are carried out with the help of volunteers. The data serve to calculate breeding bird indices from 1990, which in turn allow us to assess long-term trends. Every 20 years, a breeding bird atlas describes the distribution of all breeding species.
A species’ population trend depends on many factors that take effect on different time scales. Short-term weather-related fluctuations, for example, determine increases and declines from one year to the next. Such annual variations can only be distinguished from actual, long-term trends with the help of long time series. The objective of the Swiss monitoring schemes is to distinguish these short-term fluctuations from actual changes in a population. Long-term population trends are often caused by human influences. Identifying such trends as early as possible is important so that remedial action can be taken when necessary. Most of the time, however, follow-up studies are needed to identify the reasons for population changes.
To accomplish its monitoring objective, the Swiss Ornithological Institute documents the trends of native and regular breeding birds with surveys that are as representative as possible. Currently, we are able to calculate annual population indices for 174 species out of 177, not including introduced species (e.g. Mute Swan, Ruddy Shelduck). The individual species indices are combined to produce the Swiss Bird Index SBI®, which documents the overall situation of breeding birds since 1990. The SBI® has been integrated into various national statistics.
174 regular breeding birds are currently monitored annually in Switzerland; at 20-year intervals, all breeding species are surveyed to produce the breeding bird atlas.
Moreover, a breeding bird atlas has been published every 20 years since 1972–1976. The atlas describes in detail the distribution of all breeding bird species in Switzerland. In addition to the regular breeding birds, irregular breeders and non-native species are surveyed as fully as possible in a grid of 467 squares measuring 10 × 10 km, so-called atlas squares. Territory mapping surveys in more than 2300 kilometre squares (1 × 1 km) allow us to generate detailed density or distribution maps for many species; change maps document the changes that have taken place since 1993–1996.
The combination of annual monitoring efforts and periodic atlas projects provides us with a wealth of information, unique in its kind, on the state of bird communities in Switzerland and their trends. This detailed body of knowledge can only be maintained thanks to the long-standing commitment of more than 2000 volunteers.
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Species concerned
Subject
Population monitoring
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