How Habitat and Observer Access Bias affects eBird Data Coverage in Nevada

Outdoor recreation is popular among Nevada residents and visitors to the state.Bird watching is one such popular activity. Many bird watchers ("birders") use eBird, a citizen science project, to track and share their sightings, as well as to plan excursions. eBird is a global project, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and is more than just an online platform for tracking bird observations: The data are also made available to researchers who use them to perform broad scale studies that would otherwise be practically impossible to conduct without such a large group of volunteers collecting data. In this study, using citizen science data from eBird, I seek to quantify discrepancies in coverage among different habitat types across the state, and address possible sources of coverage bias, with the goals of (1) helping inform eBird participants who might want to help fill these coverage gaps in Nevada, and (2) identifying what factors might be driving these coverage discrepancies. This could lead to better coverage, providing a more complete data set for birders, scientists, and resource managers. To achieve this, I first describe the coverage discrepancies across different regions and habitats (EPA ecoregions) across seasons. Second, I demonstrate differences in several environmental and access related features between different eBird location types and a set of randomly generated locations. Finally, I implement spatially explicit classification models to assess which environmental features are most associated with where eBird users tend to go birding. These results suggest that ecoregions with major metropolitan areas are highly over-represented when compared to less populated zones, and that birders favor areas close to roads, cities, and water that are greener when choosing where to watch birds.

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's Degree

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Peacor, Lilly Sylvia-Cleymaet

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hurtado, Paul

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Schmidt, Deena
• Nussear, Kenneth

• Coverage Bias
• eBird
• Spatial Statistics

Language dc:language.iso

en_US, English

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholarwolf.unr.edu/handle/11714/11760

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarwolf.unr.edu:11714/11760