Bird heatmap evolve with the help of citizens
In the article “ Crowdsourcing, for the Birds”, published in the New York Times on 19 August, a system is described in which “birders” who watching birds are used as “biological sensors” to digitise a wide range of bird distributions in a comprehensive, year-round manner.
The ornithological network eBird has been accumulating data at a rate of 40% per year for some time now, and they have developed and provided a mobile app to attract birders to the data collection, selected the best birders to improve data quality, and introduced a machine learning system. And while some experts have pointed out problems with the eBird data in terms of quality, it is already in practical use.