Dynamics of Bird Communities in South-Eastern Ukraine (1987–2017)

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 28,331 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Koshelev O, Zymaroieva A, Tutova H, Zhukov O (2025). Dynamics of Bird Communities in South-Eastern Ukraine (1987–2017). Version 1.2. Bohdan Khmelnytsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University. Occurrence dataset. https://ukraine.ipt.gbif.no/resource?r=birds-se-ukraine-1987-2017&v=1.2

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Bohdan Khmelnytsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 2a0f0847-7277-4f5e-b051-68ac0ceed89e.  Bohdan Khmelnytsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Participant Node Managers Committee.

Keywords

Occurrence; Birds; Aves; Avifauna; Occurrence; Biodiversity; Long-term monitoring; Time series; Community dynamics; Population trends; Migration; Breeding season; Wintering; Point counts; Transects; Colony counts; WGS84; GPS; South-eastern Ukraine; Dnipro River valley; Steppe; Floodplain; Azov–Black Sea region; 1987–2017; Species distribution; Presence-only data; Monitoring dataset; Ukraine.; Observation PointCount Transect ColonyCount

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

This dataset contains standardized bird occurrence records collected during long-term monitoring in south-eastern Ukraine (1987–2017), covering breeding, migration and winter seasons. Methods included fixed-route transects, point counts and colony counts. Coordinates are in WGS84 (decimal degrees); spatial extent: W 35.242006; E 36.265864; S 46.41837; N 47.0796. The current release provides ~28,179 records mostly identified to species. Quality control involved taxonomic validation, duplicate detection and coordinate screening. Georeferencing accuracy is 10–100 m for GPS-era data and ~0.5–1 km for legacy records. The dataset is suitable for trend, diversity and distribution analyses, with attention to variable sampling effort.

Taxonomic Coverage

No Description available

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

No Description available

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Observations were conducted using line transects of unlimited width. Only birds stationary or active within the habitat were recorded (e.g. foraging above the transect); transit flights were excluded. Both visual and acoustic detections were used. Surveys were carried out in the early morning hours (approx. 06:00–10:00) under favorable weather conditions at a walking speed of 2–4 km/h. Each location was visited at least twice during the season. Field data were originally recorded on printed maps and later digitized.

Method step description:

1. Field recording: bird observations were recorded on paper topographic maps (scale 1:200,000), with species name, count, and behavioral notes. Digitization: during the 2010s, records were transferred to GIS projects. Each record was assigned WGS84 coordinates, species name, count, year, and data source. Taxonomic standardization: species names were updated according to BirdLife/GBIF Backbone taxonomy and formatted as binomials. Technical validation: duplicate detection, date validation, coordinate range filters, column formatting, and Darwin Core field checks were applied. Darwin Core export: the final occurrence.txt file was generated using the rgbif package and custom R scripts for GBIF IPT ingestion.

Bibliographic Citations

1. Koshelev, O., Koshelev, V., Fedushko, M., Zhukov, O. (2021). Annual course of temperature and precipitation as proximal predictors of birds’ responses to climate changes on the species and community level. Folia Oecologica, 48(2): 118–135. doi: 10.2478/foecol-2021-0013 Koshelev, O. I., Koshelev, V. O., Fedushko, M. P., & Zhukov, O. V. (2020). Time turnover of species in bird communities: the role of landscape diversity and climate change. Biosystems Diversity, 28(4), 433–444. doi:10.15421/012056 Koshelev, O. I., Koshelev, V. O., Fedushko, M. P., & Zhukov, O. V. (2019). The bird communities diversity and indicator groups of natural and anthropogenic landscapes of the South and South-east of Ukraine. Agrology, 2(4), 229‒240. doi: 10.32819/019032 Koshelev, A. I., Pakhomov, O. Y., Kunakh, O. M., Koshelev, V. A., & Fedushko, M. P. (2020). Temporal dynamic of the phylogenetic diversity of the bird community of agricultural lands in Ukrainian steppe drylands. Biosystems Diversity, 28(1), 34–40. doi:10.15421/012006 Zymaroieva, A., Zhukov, O., Fedoniuk, T., & Svenning, J.-C. (2022). Strong Decline in Breeding-Bird Community Abundance Throughout Habitats in the Azov Region (Southeastern Ukraine) Linked to Land-Use Intensification and Climate. Diversity, 14(12), 1028. https://doi.org/10.3390/d14121028

Additional Metadata