Watervogels - Wintering waterbirds in Flanders, Belgium

Watervogels - Wintering waterbirds in Flanders, Belgium is a species occurrence dataset published by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). The dataset contains more than 75,000 bird counts, covering over 600,000 observations and 35 million individuals for the period 1991-2013. It includes information on 170 species in nearly 1,200 wetland sites. The aim of these bird counts is to gather information on the size, distribution and long term trends of wintering waterbird populations in Flanders. These data are also used to assess the importance of individual sites for waterbirds, using quantitative criteria. Furthermore, the waterbird counts contribute to international monitoring programs, such as the International Waterbird Census (coordinated by Wetlands International) and fulfil some of the objectives of the European Bird Directive, the Ramsar Convention, and the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA). The data are released in bulk as open data. See the dataset metadata or the publication for contact information, scope and methodology. Issues with the dataset can be reported at https://github.com/LifeWatchINBO/data-publication/tree/master/datasets/watervogels-occurrences