Brief description
1) As part of the Tropical Rivers Inventory and Assessment Project (TRIAP), a database of 94,148 waterbird records was assembled, comprising 82,596 records from the TRIAP area and 11,552 records from a surrounding 10 km buffer. These records were sourced from databases for Atlas1 and Atlas2 provided by Birds Australia, 99.1% of which are from the Historical Atlas (pre-1977), the first Field Atlas (1977-1981) or the second Field Atlas (1997-2002).2) Waterbirds were defined to include species of freshwater and coastal wetlands including in-shore but not off-shore marine species. The TRIAP waterbird fauna comprises 145 species from twenty families, of which 112 species are represented in the database by more than ten records.
3) One TRIAP waterbird species – the Australian Painted Snipe – is listed as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBCA). Eighty-seven species are listed as "migratory" under the EPBCA, 44 species are listed under the Japan-Australia Migratory Bird Agreement and 53 species under the China-Australia Migratory Bird Agreement. The geographical characteristics of all listed species are summarised for the TRIAP area.
4) In the TRIAP area, the Australian Painted Snipe is an infrequent visitor or perhaps rare resident found more frequently in the more arid south. Its preferred habitat of ephemeral wetlands with a mix of mud-flats and dense low vegetation does not closely match habitats recorded for the species in the TRIAP area, which may reflect the marginal nature of its occurrence in this area. Breeding records in the TRIAP area have been in flooded grasslands.
5) A foraging guild classification based on a classification of foraging substrate, foraging methods and food types is presented in this dataset. Twelve foraging guilds are recognised as occurring in the TRIAP area.
6) No waterbirds are endemic to the TRIAP area. However, the TRIAP area represents a major proportion of the range of the Chestnut Rail, and a major proportion of the Australian range of the Great-billed Heron.
7) A biogeographic classification of TRIAP waterbirds is developed based on breeding distributions. Four classes are recognised: a. species for whom TRIAP is a core breeding area; b. Australasian species for whom TRIAP is marginal to their main distribution; c. Palaearctic / Nearctic migrants – these do not breed in Australia; and d. Non-migratory species with a distribution centre in Asia, or Malaysia including New Guinea. Few species other than vagrants have restricted ranges within the TRIAP area, but there is a weak declining gradient in species richness from east to west.
8) The distribution of waterbird families, foraging guilds and threatened species were compared qualitatively with a 1:250 000 classification of waterbodies into seven units. Although the results are "noisy", groups associated with deep water and saline habitats were clearly identifiable. A geomorphic classification of rivers provides only linear data and poor spatial correspondence with waterbird records. Neither classification provides a direct measure of the wetland features most relevant to most species, and whilst quantitative analysis could be pursued, it appears unlikely to identify many definitive habitat relationships.
See Table 6, section 3.3 of (Franklin 2008) for an explanation of foraging guilds. Note that "herbivore" includes the possibility of also being extensively insectivorous, whereas "insectivore" implies that herbivory is not a major component of the diet.
See lineage for more details or refer to:
Franklin DC. 2008. Report 9: The waterbirds of Australian tropical rivers and wetlands. In A Compendium of Ecological Information on Australia’s Northern Tropical Rivers. Sub-project 1 of Australia’s Tropical Rivers – an integrated data assessment and analysis (DET18). A report to Land & Water Australia, ed. GP Lukacs, CM Finlayson. National Centre for Tropical Wetland Research: Townsville.
Note: Metadata not published in Australian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD) as of October 2009- No ANZLIC Unique Identifier assigned.
Lineage
Statement: The following is an extract from the Franklin 2008 report:The two source databases provided by the Commonwealth for this project were BA_ATLAS1.mdb and Bird Australia_97.mdb. These are the Atlas1 and Atlas2 datasets compiled by Birds Australia (Blakers et al. 1984, Barrett et al. 2003), although in both cases the datasets extend beyond the Field atlas data (section 2.2 of Franklin 2008).
Relevant fields were extracted from the source databases, merged and cropped to include only those in the TRIAP area and a surrounding 10 km buffer. The buffer records were retained because of location inaccuracies in the databases (discussed in section 2.2) and in particular that a substantial portion of coastal records and species would be lost without the buffer. Atlas1 records were vetted to exclude those coded as other than "normal" or "confirmed", i.e. the categories "doubtful" and "escapee" and several codes for which metadata are not available, although there it appears that records published by Blakers et al. (1984) have been vetted further. Atlas2 records had previously been vetted by Bellio (unpublished).
The resultant database is hereafter referred to as the master database (file: TRIAP_waterbirds_master.dbf). It contains 82,596 records for the TRIAP area and 11,552 records from the buffer, 94,148 in total. Study area and buffer records are distinguished in the database, as is the TRIAP catchment of each study area record. Metadata for the database and its derivate sub-set databases are provided in Appendix 3 (Franklin 2008).
SOURCES OF ATLAS DATA
Atlas1 and Atlas2 records were obtained from a variety of sources, eleven of which are represented in the master database (see Table 1 of Franklin 2008). However, 99.1% of records were derived from three sources, the Historical Atlas and the Atlas1 and Atlas2 field atlases. The Historical Atlas is a more or less exhaustive database of published and unpublished records along with specimen records from museum and private collections around the world - Blakers et al. (1984, p. xxv) describe it as "a comprehensive catalogue of the distribution of Australian birds from the time of European settlement". The two field atlases are extensive datasets for the periods 1977–1981 and April 1997 to April 2002 respectively, as reported by Blakers et al. (1984) and Barrett et al. (2003).
Metadata for other Atlas2 sources not been provided. The "Nest Record Scheme" refers to the Birds Australia project of that name (Marchant 1987-1989). "Parks & Wildlife Commission NT" records presumably refer to the Biological Records Scheme for which no metadata have evidently been published. "QPWS WildNet" refers to the Queensland Parks & Wildlife Service's wildlife database (e.g. Anon. 2002). "Birds on Farms" was a Birds Australia project, the methods for which are presented by Barrett (2000).
For current purposes, precision and accuracy are problematic. These datasets are all extensive in nature and individual search areas were often large (Table 2). For example, in the Atlas1 field survey, records were attributed to map grids of either 10' or 1º in area for which the coordinates were the centre of the grid cell. The two hectare searches of the Atlas2 field survey are by definition the most precise, with accuracy enhanced by the availability of
Global Positioning Systems in recent times, but the alternate larger search areas are more generally applicable to the often-extensive wetlands of tropical areas. Thus, although the proportion of Atlas2 surveys that were 2 ha searches varied greatly between IBRA bioregions (Barrett et al. 2003, p729-730), these data are unlikely to be particularly relevant to waterbirds.
A GIS was prepared for the TRIAP area in which the following hierarchy could be superimposed:
1. Atlas1 records for the specified taxon or foraging guild
2. Atlas2 records for the specified taxon or foraging guild
3. all waterbird records
4. the waterbodies classification.
The distinction between Atlas1 and Atlas2 was maintained in recognition of the lower precision and accuracy associated with the latter (Table 2 - Franklin 2008).
As the relevant datasets are extremely detailed, it was possibly only to consider a sample of the TRIAP area. For this purpose, the TRIAP area was divided into 17 compartments (Table 9). Because mangrove habitat occupies such a small portion of the TRIAP landscape and most mangrove areas were poorly surveyed for birds in the Atlas datasets, an additional two compartments featuring well-surveyed mangrove areas were identified and included (Table 9- Franklin 2009).
For each compartment, I zoomed in on one or more focus areas (usually two or three) containing records of the taxon or foraging guild or containing numerous records of waterbirds but notably lacking records of the taxon or foraging guild, and noted the waterbody units utilised along with any evidence of differential use of waterbody units.
Records that were within a few kilometres of a waterbody unit were attributed to the nearest unit. The patterns noted in each compartment were aggregated across all compartments to provide a qualitative synthesis of the patterns of habitat use observed. I also noted evidence of habitat selection at the level of aggregations of units into coastal wetland complexes, major floodplains or river/billabong systems.
For the focus catchments, the exercise was repeated , zooming in on a minimum of ten selections within each catchment.
Further metadata relating to database structure and explanation of terms and codes can be found in Appendix 3 of Franklin (2009)
Created: 2015
Other Information
(TRIAP publications and reports)
(Download data)
uri :
http://data.aodn.org.au/TERN/ACEF/Ecology/TRIAP_Franklin.csv
Identifiers
- global : 7d0b4a53-1863-4600-92a4-d385c88e9be9