The EuroBirdPortal project is launching on June 5th in support of Europe’s Green Week 2015. The EBP project tackles the important task of ornithological research and conservation by developing a viewer that tracks various bird distributional patterns built with CartoDB.
The project is a new initiative of the European Bird Census Council and aims to understand Europe-wide space and time patterns of bird distributions, which include seasonal distributional changes, migratory patterns, phenology, and categorical changes over time.
The EBP combines data from European online bird recording portals. The vast amount of data contained in these portals and the sheer amplitude of the combined geographical and taxonomic coverage offer great possibilities for research of birds across large geographical areas.
To unfold the full potential of these possibilities, the EBP’s objective is to create a common data repository and to promote protocols and mechanisms for data sharing and analysis.
Using CartoDB to layer multiple data sets spatially and chronologically, and the power of torque visualizations; the EBP viewer will allow free access to thousands of amazing animated distributional maps that highlight the scope and potential of the EBP project. The demo viewer will depict weekly distributional maps of 15 different bird species. Users will be able to select two torque maps of any species, year, and type to be shown simultaneously for direct comparison. It is projected that more than 1.5 million different map combinations will be available to choose from by the end of the year.
Green Week is the annual conference on European environmental policy organized by the European Commission. The conference looks at the exciting possibilities opening up for collecting and presenting citizen science online, explores cutting-edge information systems, and examines how online information about nature conservation can better meet the needs of administrations, businesses, and the public.