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| Mapping patterns in the relative
abundance Maps showing the locations, and numbers, of birds counted as part of extensive bird surveys can provide useful information on the distribution of the species, and may highlight strongholds. However, the utility of the maps is limited by the numbers of sites surveyed and this may be biased towards areas of higher coverage. Advances in the application of geostatistics in recent years have
improved the estimation and precision of predicting relative abundance
at non-surveyed sites and so allow the potential for producing reliable
maps over the entire area of interest. Using BBS data for 2003 and
geostatistical methods (see link to spatial variance in abundance,
under Research and Conservation), we produce here maps of relative
abundance for 78 common and widespread breeding bird species. We
have used kriging here, which weights the surrounding counts at
surveyed sites to derive a prediction for unsurveyed locations. |
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BTO
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