Lessons from the first breeding bird atlas using eBird

Breeding Bird Atlases (BBA) are compendiums where species breeding distribution is mapped within a territory. BBA are a key input for conservation planning and the wildlife management, being an important step for the ornithology of a country. However, in South America, there is not any Atlas done, probably because of the monetary and logistics costs of the development of the Atlases. In this presentation, we comment on the lessons learned from the first Breeding Bird Atlas using eBird, done in Chile. We collected data from the citizens in 5 years (2011-2016), which allowed us to gather more than 500.000 data for the 334 breeding bird species, in quadrilles of 400-kilometer squares. With this information, we have done potential distribution maps using MAXENT models and a map with the breeding data obtained. Furthermore, we were able to obtain novel data about the breeding phenology and the altitudinal distribution of the species. After the development of this Atlas, we have the challenge of increase the number of the checklists of the least explored areas, and we created an effort map with this purpose that will allow us focus our future effort and diminish the bias. Additionally, it could be interesting to reduce the grid size to obtain more accurate data, but that will only be possible if the number of data in eBird increase exponencially.