[Odonata-l] annual odonate surveys

[Roy v. Grunsven]

Something like this is done in The Netherlands for a lot of groups including 
dragonflies. On the website http://www.waarneming.nl/# ( also available in 
English) people can log their sightings and any one can see what has been 
seen this year or even this morning, make a map per species or a species 
list per location. A group of administrators checks these sightings. Data 
from this site (and other channels) is added to the national database and 
rare species are checked by a committee, for this pictures or descriptions 
are used.

There is also a monitoring scheme. This is organized by  the Dutch Butterfly 
Conservation (yes they also work on dragonflies). Volunteers walk transects 
of 500 to 1000 meter and systematically count all dragonflies in sections of 
50 meter weekly from May to September (if weather permits). Additionally 
areas with rare species have separate transects that are counted 3 times 
during the season of that species. in this way there is a good general 
picture of changes  in abundance and distribution of both common and rare 
species measured in a standardized way.

But then the Netherlands is a small country with only 71 species (all 
species ever recorded) and 16 million inhabitants.


Greetings Roy van Grunsven


>From: Joshua Stuart Rose <opihi at mindspring.com>
>To: Odonata-l <odonata-l at listhost.ups.edu>,        SE Odonata 
><se-odonata at yahoogroups.com>
>Subject: Re: [Odonata-l] annual odonate surveys
>Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:33:32 -0600
>
>I've never heard of something like this for odonata, but Sapsucker
>Woods (of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY) had something
>much like it for birds. Basically, they had a big white-board with a
>list of all of the regularly occurring bird species for the area.
>There were also columns with blanks for entering date, time,
>location, name of observer, and other pertinent information. Anyone
>seeing a species for the first time in a given year would drop by the
>Lab of O and fill out the data for that species. It spurred a certain
>amount of competitive spirit to get out into the field and find
>something to get your name up on the board (I only ever got up there
>once; Olive-sided Flycatcher, I think it was spring 2001, and nearly
>ruptured my transmission in the process).
>
>Joshua Stuart Rose
>1220 Kerria Ave.
>McAllen TX
>opihi at mindspring.com
>956-664-9915
>
>Duke Natural History Society
>http://www.biology.duke.edu/dnhs/
>
>
>On Oct 31, 2006, at 5:24 PM, John C. Abbott wrote:
>
> > I think this is a great idea Dennis.  I'm imagining that it would
> > be nice and convenient to have these lists in one place,
> > searchable, and easily accessible.  OdonataCentral is going through
> > a substantial programmatic improvement and it would be easy to
> > incorporate and automatically maintain a system that would work in
> > conjunction with the checklists already available in the new roll
> > out of OdonataCentral.  In fact it could even be expanded to the
> > county level as well.  Though the new OdonataCentral won't be ready
> > for a while, I think we can fairly easily integrate this into the
> > current system in the short run.  I will see what we can do to have
> > a 2007 yearbook of records ready to go by the new year.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Dennis Paulson
> >
> > Those on CalOdes, the California odonate listserve, know all about
> > this, but I'd like to disseminate the idea.
> >
> > Kathy Biggs, the Odonata Central of California, has been
> > encouraging people in the state to get out there and find all of
> > the species known to occur in the state each year. She keeps a
> > running tally of species reported, and this year, for example, they
> > have reported 103 of the 111 species known from the state. This may
> > be the total for 2006, as the flight season rapidly shuts down. It
> > might prompt someone to ask about the status of the 8 species not
> > seen and why they weren't. In most cases, it will probably be
> > because no one visited the very few places they are known to occur.
> > Alternatively, they were sought and couldn't be found, which might
> > be of significance.
> >
> > This seems to be a great way to encourage people to get out in the
> > field, and in addition it prompts those in the field to look for
> > all species, common and rare, each year. By encouraging a search
> > for every regional species, we can continue to keep track of all
> > species in each state (or province, or country), an important
> > monitoring tool for those that are rare or peripheral or are known
> > to change in occurrence over time. And of course, the more time
> > spent in the field, the more we will learn anyway.
> >
> > Are there any other regions that pursue this survey strategy?
>
>
>
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