Digital Accessible Knowledge of the Birds of India:Characterizing Gaps in Time and Space

This paper evaluates Digital Accessible Knowledge on occurrence of Indian bird species. More than 2 million primary occurrence records from across India were obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and eBird. These were processed into maps of inventory completeness across the country both prior to 1980 and after 2000, in an attempt to develop evaluations of faunal change resulting from global climate change. We found good coverage of the country by well-inventoried areas after 2000, but almost no coverage prior to 1980. As such, in before-and-after comparisons documenting effects of global change on Indian birds, the ‘after’ is well documented, but the ‘before’ is lacking. This significant information gap points to the need for digital capture and open sharing of historical information regarding Indian bird species’ occurrences; this information will derive in large part from natural history museum specimens, particularly in India and Great Britain, and potentially from older observational data sources and the literature.