SABAP2 is the acronym for the Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2, which is the follow-up to the

Southern African Bird Atlas Project The Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP) was conducted between 1987 and 1991.Harrison, J.A., Allan, D.G., Underhill, L.G., Herrmans, M., Tree, A.J., Parker, V. & Brown, C.J. (1997) ''The Atlas of Southern African Birds. Vols 1 and 2'', Bird ...

(for which the acronym was SABAP, and which is now referred to as SABAP1). The first atlas project took place from 1987 to 1991. The current project was a joint venture between the Animal Demography Unit at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

BirdLife South Africa BirdLife South Africa, formerly the South African Ornithological Society (SAOS), is the South African national partner organisation of BirdLife International. It has a membership of 5,000, many of whom belong to more than 32 affiliated bird cl ...

, and the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). Following the closure of the Animal Demography Unit, the project is now managed by the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town. The project aims to map the distribution and relative abundance of birds in southern Africa, and the original atlas area included

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

Lesotho Lesotho, formally the Kingdom of Lesotho and formerly known as Basutoland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Entirely surrounded by South Africa, it is the largest of only three sovereign enclave and exclave, enclaves in the world, t ...

, and

Eswatini Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini, also known by its former official names Swaziland and the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa on all sides except the northeast, where i ...

, although since 2012 the project has expanded to include

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

Botswana Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the sou ...

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

and

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

. SABAP2 was launched on 1 July 2007. The field work for this project is conducted by more than 1700 volunteers, known as citizen scientists – they collect the data in the field at their own cost and in their own time. As such they make a huge contribution to the conservation of birds and their habitat. By June 2015, the SABAP2 database contained more than 128,000 checklists, and a total of 7.4 million records of bird distribution in the project database. In June 2015, the number of SABAP2 records exceeded that of SABAP1 for the first time. More than 72% of the original SABAP2 atlas area (i.e. South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini) had at least one checklist by that time. This information is updated continuously on the project website; see §External links below. A number of postgraduate research projects have been based partially or completely on SABAP data, either from SABAP1 only, SABAP2 only, or comparing the changes in bird distributions and reporting rates from SABAP1 to SABAP2; and many scientific research articles have also been published on these and other analyses.

Atlassing protocol

In SABAP1, bird lists were collected for quarter degree grid cells, which are 15 minutes by 15 minutes, or approximately 27 km by 25 km in size. In SABAP2, the resolution is far higher: the unit of data collection is the pentad – five minutes of latitude by five minutes of longitude – i.e. squares with sides of roughly 9 km, one ninth the size of quarter degree grid cells. There are 17,000 pentads in the original atlas area of South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, and a further 10,000 in Namibia. SABAP2 accepts data submitted either as ad-hoc records, or "full protocol" cards. For a full protocol card, a minimum of 2 hours and a maximum of 5 days can be spent adding birds to a checklist (card) for a pentad. An effort should be made to visit all available habitats. Ad-hoc records do not meet the criteria of time spent or coverage. Contributors are encouraged to submit 'full protocol' cards, as the information is used to calculate measures of relative abundance, e.g. reporting rate. Reporting rate is how often a species is recorded across a set of full protocol cards, usually expressed as a percentage. For example, if a pentad has 10 cards submitted, and a species is recorded for 4 of these, then the reporting rate is 40%. Ad-hoc records and full protocol cards help map species distribution, while only full protocol cards can be used to measure abundance, and changes in abundance.Lee, A.T.K, Altwegg, R. and Barnard, P., 2017. Estimating conservation metrics from atlas data: the case of southern African endemic birds. Bird Conservation International, 27(3), pp.323-336. Since 2015, most data to the project is contributed using the BirdLasser app, developed by Lejint.

References

External links

SABAP2-website

BirdLife South Africa

SANBI

BirdLasser

Slideshow demonstrating range changes of seven species between SABAP1 and SABAP2

Bibliography of articles and theses

* Available at http://sabap2.birdmap.africa/media/bibliography#pgcontent {{authority control Nature conservation in South Africa Environmental organisations based in South Africa Ornithological atlases Ornithological citizen science Ornithological organizations