Use Case - Butterfly monitoring
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Familiarize yourself with the practice use case scenario. A suggested solution will be provided in the solution appendix. This Use Case is not graded. |
Scenario
Butterfly Monitoring
This narrative was developed as a basis for practical exercises in the biodiversity data mobilization course and the exercise concept and content was developed by Kate Ingenloff and Laura Anne Russell, based on previous work by Alberto González-Talaván, Danny Vélez, Larissa Smirnova, Laura Anne Russell, Mélianie Raymond and Nicolas Noé.
It is a fictionalized scenario based on a real dataset and is meant only for instructional purposes. The original dataset is attributed to Pettersson L B (2025). Swedish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (SeBMS). Version 1.12. Department of Biology, Lund University. Sampling event dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/othndo accessed via GBIF.org on 2026-04-12.
Description
The Swedish Butterfly Network (SBN) has been monitoring the occurrence of butterflies (Lepidoptera) at a series of fixed sites 3-7 times per season on an annual basis since 2009.
This network of observers implements one of two standard protocols at each site: Pollard walks where the site is an established transect or point counts at stationary point sites. Observation information is captured by observers on paper data capture sheets that they send to the national SBN office.
The SBN steering committee would like to start publishing these data online to GBIF in order to strengthen collaborations the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Transport Administration, and the Swedish County Administration Boards to influence conservation policies for Lepidoptera in Sweden.
Data collection
Two different recording methods are used by SBN. One method is the point site counts which cover an area with a 25 m radius for 15 min per visit. The other method is fixed-route Pollard walk transects, typically 0.5-3 km in length. These methods are described in Pollard and Yates (1993) and Pettersson et al. (2010) and enable the monitoring scheme to assess yearly changes both in the number of butterflies seen and in species composition.
These sampling efforts happen April 1st to September 30th annually. Sites are visited 3-7 times per season.
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The data are, for each species, the summed total of all individuals observed during the visit. For transect sites it is the sum of all individuals from all segments.
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Each log contain observations of species that were actually present and observed at the surveyed sites.
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Site coordinates represent midpoints for point sites and centroid midpoints for transect sites.
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Values under stateProvince represent 24 of the 25 Swedish provinces (swe landskap). The 25th province (Lappland) is represented by the 5 areas called ’lappmarker’ (swe).
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Event time is reported for each sampling event as starttime/endtime, or starttime only.
Digital data description
The SBN office uses groups of volunteers to digitize the paper logs and produce digital spreadsheets. The spreadsheets are very simple and include three datasheets:
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the first captures the information linked to the sampling efforts including survey date, location, and weather conditions
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the second captures information about individual transect sections
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the third captures the species encountered and the number of individuals observed
Exercises
The individual exercises for this use case are located in the corresponding modules.
Exercise sheet
Download UC-Practice-exercise-sheet_EN.docx to provide your answers. (2.9 MB)