Roger Fieldwick - August 2008

SABAP2 was formally launched on 1 July 2007. In this article I review progress, examine some trends, report on project targets and describe some aspects of the project website.

Participation:
At the beginning of September last year, 50 atlasers had registered and submitted lists. This number has continued to grow steadily and at the end of June, contributions had been received from 253 birders. The trend is still upwards and two new people are joining every three days and submitting lists.

At the end of June, 4 004 lists had been tendered, comprising 222 600 records. Because of the new atlasers joining, the number of lists sent in is growing exponentially and currently, lists are being submitted at a rate of 20 per day. Gauteng birders have participated enthusiastically in this project and between them have submitted many hundreds of lists.

Coverage:
Each quarter degree cell (QDC) has been divided into nine pentads (five minutes x five minutes – approximately 9,25 km deep and 8,35 km wide in our region). There are about 17 000 pentads covering South Africa and at the end of June, 1 683 pentads had been visited at least once. Like the number of lists, the number of new pentads being covered is growing at an ever-increasing rate and currently, 15 new pentads are being surveyed every two days.

The coverage map was downloaded from the project website. You will see that Gauteng (particularly northern Gauteng) and the Western Cape have been well atlased, but coverage around the other major cities (Pietermaritzburg/Durban, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, Kimberly and Polokwane, for example) has been rather disappointing. Visitors to holiday destinations such as Kruger Park, the coast between East London and Port Elizabeth and the Western Cape have submitted a number of lists. Less populous areas, particularly Northern Cape, western North-West Province, Free State and the Eastern Cape hinterland have been very thinly atlased and these are areas that the organisers will have to give special attention. The recent large fuel-price increases will make birders increasingly reluctant to travel long distances to cover remote pentads.

The next stage:
The project steering committee has approved a two-pronged attack:
•    increased coverage through continuing to visit new pentads
•    in-depth coverage through re-visiting pentads that have already been atlased.

To achieve these objectives, the following five targets have been set:
1.    by the end of 2008, to get at least one pentad covered in every half-degree cell (currently we have achieved 65 per cent)
2.    then to get one pentad covered in every one of the 1 028 QDCs (currently 34 per cent)
3.    to get at least one third of the pentads covered in 75 per cent of the QDCs (currently 17 per cent)
4.    to get more than one list for 80 per cent of the pentads that have been covered (currently 41 per cent)
5.    to get eight or more lists for 25 per cent of the covered pentads (currently 5 per cent).

Reaching the first two targets will pose the greatest challenge.

The project website:
For those of you with access to the internet, I recommend you explore the website on http://sabap2.adu.org.za . As lists are submitted, they are processed automatically and the data fed into a large database. The website is updated twice daily.

On the left hand side of the home page are a number of selectable options. The one titled Summaries, then Gap analysis is the one that I most frequently visit. If you click on this, a Gap analysis map of South Africa will appear (which is similar to the coverage map in this article). Clicking on an area of interest on the map brings up tabulations of the 16 QDCs in that one degree x one degree square and details of coverage per month for every pentad in each QDC. This information is invaluable for planning atlasing trips.

A new and interesting feature is to click on Summaries and then on Data summaries. If you enter the observer code in the appropriate box, this will lead you to a number of options such as a list of the species seen by that observer, a map of the pentads covered, a summary of pentads visited, and so on. Observer codes for some Gauteng atlasers are: Niall Perrins 10101; Stephan Terblanche 51; André Marx 608; Rihaan Geyser 614; Roger Fieldwick and Pat Tattersall 10005; Ernst Retief 1691; Geoff Lockwood 135; Etienne Marais 1692; Brian Groom 1598; Faansie Peacock 920.

Probably the most important part of the website is the species distribution maps: click on Species Accounts and then on Species distribution maps. For each species you have a choice of SABAP2 data, smoothed SABAP1 data and SABAP1 text, the last being the text published in the two volumes of the SABAP1 atlas.

The foregoing gives you just a taste of some of the options available.

Finally:
This huge project has got off to a flying start and the constantly growing number of new atlasers submitting lists is testament that the South African birding fraternity views SABAP2 as very important indeed. There is still a great deal to be done so if you would like to participate, please get in touch with Ernst Retief as soon as possible.