LBT-Birds UTU

The infrastructure gathers together datasets containing valuable long-term data on breeding bird populations. The utilization of research populations is based not only on long time series, but also on the fact that the long-followed research populations (infra) keep on existing and enable experiments and sample collections even at short notice.

Long-term bird nesting time series include, for example, the breeding bird time series of the Kevo Research Station (1983-2021), data from the Harjavalta Environmental Research Project (1991-2021), Ruissalo Field Monitoring Data (2004-2021), prof. Lars von Haartman's 50-year dataset from Askainen (1943-1994) and the Tammisaari bird nesting time series (2003-2020). These time series mainly include information on passerine birds (tits, flycatchers, etc.) but similar data have been collected on birds of prey (hawks, owls). All these data contain similar information on breeding birds (e.g. location, timing of nesting, number of eggs and chicks, success of breeding, measurements on chicks and parent birds). Birds are marked individually and various environmental variables (environmental quality, birds’ food items, pollution, etc.) are also collected from each population. All of the above materials have been and will be used in the future in international research projects to investigate the effects of environmental changes. The purpose of the research infrastructure is to support, coordinate and standardize the collection, data storage, documentation, long-term storage and research use of these valuable time series. The time series collected at the University of Turku will be integrated into the European SPI-Birds database. The idea of the SPI-Birds project is to compile time series related to bird nesting in a common and standardized database. Materials already linked to the SPI database are immediately available upon request for scientific research from the SPI-Birds project page.

1943

University of Turku

environmental research, climate change, bird populations, environmental pollution, phenology

NATURAL SCIENCES