The SABAP2 legacy: A review of the history and use of data generated by a long-running citizen science project

Abstract

Significance:
• The Second Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2) – initiated in 2007 – is one of the region’s longest-running citizen science programmes and collects spatial and temporal data on birds.
• Data from the project are publicly available and used extensively by environmental impact assessment practitioners, conservationists, authors, protected area managers, scientists and the general public.
• The project is the template for other established projects that now operate across the continent, collectively now falling under the ‘African Bird Atlas Project’ umbrella.
• We show that since the initiation of SABAP2, there has been a three-fold increase in publications, with over 150 papers that can be attributed to SABAP2.
• The contribution of citizen scientists to the published scientific domain has been enormous.