Long-term monitoring of mammal communities in the Peneda-Gerês National Park using camera trap data

Annika Zuleger1, Andrea Perino1, Florian Wolf1, Helen Wheeler2, Henrique Pereira1, Annika Zuleger3, Henrique Pereira3, Andrea Perino3, Florian Wolf3, Helen  Wheeler 4

1 iDiv - Deutsches Zentrum für integrative Biodiversitätsforschung, Puschstraße 4, 04103, Leipzig, Germany; 2 School of Life Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom; 3 iDiv - Deutsches Zentrum für integrative Biodiversitätsforschung, Puschstraße 4, 04103, Leipzig; 4 School of Life Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Corresponding author(s): Annika Zuleger (annika_mikaela.zuleger@idiv.de)Andrea Perino (andrea.perino@idiv.de)Florian WolfHelen WheelerHenrique Pereira (hpereira@idiv.de), Annika Zuleger (annika_mikaela.zuleger@idiv.de)

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

Zuleger A, Perino A, Wolf F, Wheeler H, Pereira H (2022): Long-term monitoring of mammal communities in the Peneda-Gerês National Park using camera trap data. v1.2. Biodiversity Data Journal. Dataset/Samplingevent. https://ipt.pensoft.net/resource?r=ct_peneda&amp;v=1.2

Abstract

We provide a dataset from long-term camera trap monitoring in the parishes of Castro Laboreiro and Lamas de Mouro, Peneda-Gerês National Park, between 2015 and 2023. We established a 16 km² grid of 64 cameras deployed yearly during the summer months. Here, we publish the data and images collected between 2015 and 2023, using GBIF Darwin Event Core. The project is on-going and additional data will be included in the future. The dataset is freely available for ecological analysis but also for trainining machine learning systems in automated image classification as all pictures have been manually classified.

Keywords: Samplingevent, camera traps, mammal, Portugal, long-term monitoring, Samplingevent

Project details

Project title: Long-term monitoring of mammal communities in the Peneda-Gerês National Park (PNPG) using camera trap data
Personnel: Annika Zuleger
Study area descriptions/descriptor: The study was conducted in the parishes of Castro Laboreiro and Lamas de Mouro in the Peneda-Gerês National Park in Northern Portugal. The park was created in 1971 with the aim to protect the high natural value landscape. It is the oldest protected area and the only national park in Portugal. Over the past 60 years the region underwent large land-use changes. Especially in the area surrounding Castro Laboreiro where historically agro-pastoral activities were common, with seasonal migration from summer villages at the plateau to winter villages in the valley, socio-economic changes lead to a large population decline. This abandonment opened possibilities for natural succession and passive rewilding in the area. Today the area supports a great diversity of habitats consisting of small agricultural fields in the valley, shrublands and oak forest patches in the hillside and pastures for cattle and agricultural fields in the plateau. Since 1971, Castro Laboreiro is part of the Peneda-Gerês National Park and since 1997, it is also part of the European protected area network Natura 2000.
The elevation in the area ranges from 300 to 1,340 m. As it is located at the transition between the Mediterranean and Atlantic biogeographic zones, the region has a temperate Mediterranean climate, characterized by cold and rainy winters and warm summers. The average annual temperature throughout the study duration was 11.9 °C at 800m elevation, with an average annual precipitation of 1858 mm between 1985 and 2015. Within the camera trap grid, we identified seven different land-use types from aerial imagery in 2020, with bare rock accounting for almost half of the area (45.30%) followed by low shrub (20.13%) and oak forest (18.77%). While agriculture (2.42%) and urban infrastructure (1.11%) only represent a considerably small part of the area, high shrub and pine forest make up for 8.64% and 3.63% respectively.
Design description: The project aims to (1) assess the population trends of the medium and large size mammals of the region over time; (2) analyse the effects of passive rewilding and other environmental variables on the occurence and abundance; (3) look at potential interactions between wild and domestic species and (4) analyze effects of environmental and anthropogenic variables on their behavior (e.g. activity patterns).

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.pensoft.net/resource?r=ct_peneda

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: Mammals and birds were identified to the species level where possible.
Taxonomic ranks
Class: Mammalia, Aves
Common names: Mammals, Birds

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: Castro Laboreiro and Lamas de Mouro, Peneda-Gerês National Park, Portugal.
Coordinates: 41°59'49.2''N and 42°2'9.6''N Latitude; 8°12'18''W and 8°9'28.8''W Longitude 

Temporal coverage: April 19, 2015 - August 19, 2015

Temporal coverage: April 13, 2016 - August 27, 2016

Temporal coverage: May 8, 2017 - October 3, 2017

Temporal coverage: May 5, 2018 - October 15, 2018

Temporal coverage: May 7, 2019 - October 8, 2019

Temporal coverage: June 2, 2020 - May 29, 2023

Methods

Method step description: Each image obtained from the camera traps was classified manually. The images were later imported into Agouti (https://www.agouti.eu/) to be made publicly available. There they were automatically grouped into sequences of contiguous images with each sequence representing one distinct occurrence event. The pre-classified observations were linked to the respective sequences using the image name. Starting with the data from 2020, the images were directly imported into Agouti and classified within the software. The dataset was exported from Agouti in Camtrap DP format and manually converted to Darwin Core standard. It is structured as a sample event dataset including the event and the occurrence data and published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A). Here, an event refers to a camera trap deployment at a certain location over a certain amount of time (equivalent to "deployment" in Camtrap DP format) and an occurrence refers to a distinct occurrence event (here: sequence, equivalent to "observation" in Camtrap DP format). The published DwC-A dataset only includes events that contained observations of an animal. As the DwC-A format currently doesn't allow for hierachical datasets with more than two levels, we included the first ten images of each occurrence event as associatedMedia in the occurence table. The original Camtrap DP dataset including also blank and unknown occurrences will be published as supplemental material to this publication and made available through GBIF in the future.
Study extent description: The dataset is obtained from a long-term monitoring campaign that is conducted every year since 2015. Currently, images from 2015 to 2021 are classified, but further data will be included in the future. In 2015 and 2016 camera traps were deployed from April to August and from 2017 to 2019 from May to October. In 2020, because of travel restrictions during the Covid pandemic camera traps could only be deployed in June and were left in the field until May, 2021. Due to theft and malfunction the number of operative cameras ranged from 61 in 2016 to 48 in 2020. Since 2020 cameras remain in the field all year with maintainance and data collection scheduled in May and October.
Sampling description: For the study, 64 camera traps (Reconyx Hyperfire HC600, Holmen, WI, USA) were deployed in a 16 km² grid South-West of Castro Laboreiro. They were distributed as uniformly as possible across the different land-use types (e.g. 10% of cameras in land-use types that cover 10% of the area) with one camera per 0.25 ha grid cell (approx. 500 m spacing between each camera). Real locations could deviate by up to 100 meters from the planned locations due to accessibility and placement possibilities. Further, some locations had to be adjusted throughout the years because of changes in the vegetation structure or due to theft, but new locations were within 100 m of the original location and placed in similar habitats. The coordinates in the dataset were rounded to three decimals for safety reasons.
The cameras remained active for 24 hours per day and were programmed on motion sensor to take three consecutive pictures each time they were trigged by an animal with no delay after a trigger event. The sensitivity of the sensor was set to high in 2015, 2016 and 2019, medium in 2017 and 2018 and medium/high in 2020 (see eventRemarks). Sampling effort was measured as the number of camera traps multiplied by the number of days they remained active (Rovero et al. 2010).
Quality control description: To ensure using the updated scientific name and common name of species, the taxonomic nomenclature followed the catalogue of life (https://www.catalogueoflife.org/). Additionally, we checked every species in the database of the IUCN Red List of Threatened species (https://www.iucnredlist.org) for their conservation status and populations trends.

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Long-term monitoring of mammal communities in the Peneda-Gerês National Park using camera trap data
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.pensoft.net/archive.do?r=ct_peneda
Publication date of data: 2023-08-23
Language: English
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2022-12-15
Hierarchy level: Dataset