Australian Aerial Waterbird Survey Database

The Australian Aerial Waterbird Surveys (AWS) database stores temporal and spatial waterbird data on individual species, their breeding status and estimates of wetland area, collected during annual aerial surveys, extending back to 1983. The core methodology for these surveys has remained the same. The database includes three principal survey programs: The Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey, the National Waterbird Survey and surveys of the major wetland sites in the Murray-Darling Basin. Since 1983, the Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey has covered about a third of the continent each October, representing one of the larger and longer running biodiversity surveys in Australia, sampling wetland and waterbird communities across 2.7 million km2 of eastern Australia. In 2008, we did aerial surveys over most large wetlands across Australia during a period of two months. Since 2010, we have comprehensively surveyed all the major wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Waterbirds (including nests and broods) were counted from high-winged aircraft (e.g. Cessna 206) at 167–204 km hr-1 and a height of 30–46 m, within 150 m of the wetland‘s shoreline where waterbirds concentrated. A front-right observer (navigator) and a back-left observer independently record counts on audio recorders, with their combined counts making up a completed count. Counts are attributed on the recorder to a unique number for each wetland, and a geolocation, as well as the time of day the survey commenced. Also, the percent fullness (inundated area) of each wetland is estimated, relative to the mapped high water mark. All waterbirds are identified to species except those that cannot be consistently identified to species’ level from the air and were grouped: small grebes, small egrets, terns and small and large migratory wading birds (Charadriformes).