North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) in Canada
The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) is a road-based, long-term, continental survey that focuses on measuring breeding bird abundance at 50 stops along roughly 40-km long transects.
This collection houses PDFs of active BBS route maps, which are grouped by province or territory. These maps allow BBS volunteers in Canada to easily locate the start of their route, and to navigate the official route. Once available, the collection will also house the GIS shapefiles for all active and discontinued route paths in Canada, and the current locations for all 50 stops along each transect.
This collection also houses archived trend results and annual indices derived from analyses prepared by the Canadian Wildlife Service using BBS data for 2009, 2011 and 2012. A link for the most current BBS trend results is provided below under Supplemental Information.
Raw BBS data are publicly available through through the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center's website, at the link provided below under Supplemental Information.
The BBS is jointly coordinated by Environment Canada's Canadian Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. Any use of BBS data for Canada should acknowledge the hundreds of skilled volunteers in Canada who have participated in the BBS over the years, those who have served as provincial or territorial coordinators for the BBS, and the Boreal Avian Modelling Project (BAM; www.borealbirds.ca), whose collaboration was invaluable to the creation of the BBS route and stop location dataset.
General information on the BBS in Canada (e.g., the data collection methods, survey coverage, etc.) can be found here:
http://ec.gc.ca/reom-mbs/default.asp?lang=En&n=416B57CA -1
Current Canadian BBS trend results and annual indices, as well as detailed descriptions of the information provided in these estimates and the statistical methods used, are available through the Canadian BBS results website:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/ron-bbs/P001/A001/?lang=e
Raw BBS data are publicly accessible through the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center's data portal:
- Publisher - Current Organization Name: Environment and Climate Change Canada
- Licence: Open Government Licence - Canada
Data and Resources
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View EC Data MartotherEnglish guide other
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View EC Data MartotherFrench guide other
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North American Breeding Bird Survey Maps for CanadaotherEnglish dataset other
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North American Breeding Bird Survey Maps for CanadaotherFrench dataset other