science

Southern African Bird Atlas Project

Southern African Bird Atlas Project is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Southern African Bird Atlas Project rather than just read about it. In short: The Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP) was conducted between 1987 and 1991. Because a new bird atlas was started in southern Africa in 2007, the earlier project is now referred to as SABAP1.

Key takeaways

Southern African Bird Atlas Project belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Southern African Bird Atlas Project to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Southern African Bird Atlas Project from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP) was conducted between 1987 and 1991. Because a new bird atlas was started in southern Africa in 2007, the earlier project is now referred to as SABAP1. The new atlas project is known as the Second Southern African Bird Atlas Project, and is abbreviated to SABAP2. The project is ongoing, and is now managed by the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town. Most of the data capture happens through the application BirdLasser. The project is currently funded by BirdLife South Africa and the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

Scope SABAP covered six countries: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. At the time, Mozambique was engulfed in a civil war, and had to be excluded. The resolution for SABAP1 was the quarter degree grid cell (QDGC), 15 minutes of latitude by 15 minutes of longitude, 27.4 km north–south and about 25 km east–west, an area of about 700 km². However, in Botswana a half degree grid cell was used. The total number of grid cells, taking account of the coarser resolution in Botswana, was 3973. Fieldwork was conducted mainly in the five-year period 1987–1991, but the project coordinators included all suitable data collected from 1980–1987. In some areas, particularly those that were remote and inaccessible, data collection continued until 1993. Fieldwork was undertaken mainly by birders, and most of it was done on a volunteer basis. Fieldwork consisted of compiling bird lists for the QDGCs. All the checklists were fully captured into a database. The final dataset consisted of 147 605 checklists, containing a total of 7.3 million records of bird distribution. Of the total 3973 QDGCs, only 88 had no checklists (2.2% of the total). Project coordination was undertaken by the Avian Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town. The unit changed its name in 2008 to Animal Demography Unit, to reflect its expanding ambit, but retained the acronym ADU. The Animal Demography Unit was closed down in 2018.

Products The final product of the project was a two-volume set of A4-sized books, covering 932 species, with a total of 1500 pages, published in 1997 by BirdLife South Africa. The books are now out of print, but the individual species texts are available on the SABAP2 website. Volume 1 also contains a chapter on the relevance of southern African geography to birds. The Atlas of Southern African Birds was, at the time of publication, the largest biodiversity project ever conducted in Africa. This project showed that birdlife in southern Africa reflects the wide diversity of habitats in the region: 9% of the world's bird species are regularly found there, even though it constitutes only 1.67% of the world's land area.

Impact The impact of the project on southern African ornithology was considerable. The species texts did not only provide information on distribution, but also presented new information and analyses on the seasonality of breeding and the direction and seasonality of migration. SABAP therefore became an essential reference for all research involving these fundamental aspects of avian biology. It provided much of the information upon which the Important Bird Area selection process in southern Africa was based, and for the IUCN Red List for birds in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Southern African Bird Atlas Project

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Southern African Bird Atlas Project claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Southern African Bird Atlas Project before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Southern African Bird Atlas Project ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Southern African Bird Atlas Project

In research: Southern African Bird Atlas Project appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Southern African Bird Atlas Project in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Southern African Bird Atlas Project is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Environmental organisations based in South Africa, Nature conservation in South Africa, Ornithological atlases, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Southern African Bird Atlas Project outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Southern African Bird Atlas Project” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Southern African Bird Atlas Project in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Southern African Bird Atlas Project means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Southern African Bird Atlas Project out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Southern African Bird Atlas Project in simple terms?

The Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP) was conducted between 1987 and 1991. Because a new bird atlas was started in southern Africa in 2007, the earlier project is now referred to as SABAP1.

Why does Southern African Bird Atlas Project matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Southern African Bird Atlas Project?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Southern African Bird Atlas Project.