Count birds and map out climate change

Birds migrate throughout the world, and local people are the best counters. Help count via the eBird project.

TAKE A FIELD TRIP: Scientists from the Cornell University in New York state have developed the eBird app, which is one of the most successful citizen scientist projects so far. More than 300,000 participants from all over the world have made more than half a billion observations of 10,372 different bird species. Amateur scientists’ recordings show where the birds are, and how many there are at different times of year and day.

The data has helped scientists study bird migration patterns, population changes, and nature conservation projects, and their research has been published in hundreds of scientific articles. US scientists in 2017 used eBird data to predict how climate change will affect bird life. Other scientists have identified the areas in which bird conservation would have the greatest effect.

Birds arrive earlier

How are bird migration patterns affected by temperature and climate change? To get the answer, scientists from the University of North Carolina have used data from eBird stating when 18 bird species arrived to the US over a period of 10 years. It turns out that their arrival is determined by temperature. The scarlet tanager songbird has begun to arrive about eight days earlier over seven years, in which

temperatures have risen by 3.5 degrees.