Grassland butterflies – population index (Dataset URL is not available)

Dataset URL is not available. For further clarification please contact the Organisation.

The data for the "Abundance and distribution of selected European species" indicator originate from the European Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (eBMS) (a joint initiative of Butterfly Conservation Europe and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) and the Assessing ButterfLies in Europe (ABLE) project.

Butterfly sampling method is based on Butterfly Transect Counts (Pollard and Yates, 1993). eBMS provides methodological support to volunteers and country/regional networks, e.g. via the Manual for Butterfly Transect Counts.

The butterfly indicator is based on the fieldwork of thousands of trained professional and volunteer recorders, counting butterflies on more than 6200 transects scattered widely across the European Union under standardised conditions. National coordinators collect the data and perform the first quality control. In 2017 more than 55,880 km of transect walks were made, more than 90% of them by volunteers, monitoring each transect an average of 15 times per year (Van Swaay et al., 2017).