How Habitat and Observer Access Bias affects eBird Data Coverage in Nevada
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Authors
Peacor, Lilly Sylvia-Cleymaet
Issue Date
2025
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Coverage Bias , eBird , Spatial Statistics
Alternative Title
Abstract
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.