European Breeding Bird Atlas 2

Date: March 20-22, 2013
Event Type: Workshop
Participant: Karen Aghababyan, Chief Scientist, AUA Acopian Center for the Environment
Venue: Barcelona, Spain

The European Breeding Bird Atlas 2 (EBBA2) Workshop took place in Barcelona, Spain. Attending the Workshop from the AUA Acopian Center for the Environment was Dr. Karen Aghababyan, the Center’s Chief Scientist and Head of Environmental Lab. Dr. Aghababyan has recently been appointed by the European Bird Census Council as Armenia’s National Coordinator of its EBBA2 initiative.

The Workshop was dedicated to launching the preparation for the new Atlas. The Workshop participants also discussed standardization of data and methods, management and processing, planning and fundraising, on-line portals, and engagement of local and foreign observers in the process of data collection. “This is an ambitious project and requires participation of National Coordinators from 50 or so countries,” says Dr. Aghababyan. “The EBBA2 will update the ground-breaking first version, the data of which is by now 30 years old,” he continued. 

At the Workshop, Dr. Aghababyan presented the current condition of ornithological data gathering in Armenia, esp. as it relates to the Atlas. He reported that some of the data collection work has begun. Training modules for volunteers are developed and tested. Other countries that presented their efforts included Slovakia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Turkey, Russia, and Croatia.