Start with a bird, place or evidence question
KoreAves is built around a short question flow rather than a dashboard. Species pages orient you to a taxon, Regional GIS answers where eligible records are documented, Compare shows how two or three taxa differ across the same 17 administrative regions, and Sources & evidence shows which providers support the displayed evidence.
What “documented evidence” means
- Documented in a region
- At least one eligible record for the selected taxon is assigned to that current South Korean first-level administrative division under the active KoreAves evidence contract.
- No eligible records
- No qualifying record is present in the analyzed dataset for that view. It is not proof that the bird is biologically absent.
- Record count
- A count of source records that passed the relevant eligibility rules. It is not an individual-bird count, population estimate, abundance measure or habitat-suitability score.
- Source support
- Which current record-source types contribute eligible evidence. Different providers retain different methods and are not summed into a synthetic abundance value.
How to read the Regional GIS map
The map uses South Korea's current 17 first-level administrative divisions as a query and display frame. A highlighted division means eligible evidence is documented there for the selected taxon. The colored area is not a modeled biological range, a habitat boundary or a statement of continuous presence.
Use a region selection to inspect the documented taxa and source support for that administrative division, then follow the taxon or source links when you need the underlying context.
How to read a taxon comparison
Compare partitions the same 17 administrative regions into places where all selected taxa, only some selected taxa, or none of the selected taxa have eligible documented evidence. This is a comparison of independently documented evidence within the same administrative division. It does not establish co-occurrence, biological sympatry, identical habitat or records from the same place and time.
A value such as 2 / 3 taxa evidenced therefore means two of the three selected taxa have qualifying evidence in that division under the current dataset, not that two taxa were observed together.
How to verify what you see
The current build's empirical record sources are National Institute of Ecology EcoBank surveys, GBIF occurrence evidence. Identity, naming references and administrative geometry have separate roles shown in the Source register. KoreAves keeps those roles separate so a checklist source is not presented as an occurrence source and a map boundary is not presented as biological evidence.
Use Sources & evidence when you want to inspect support for a selected taxon. Use Dataset for the version and citation, Methodology for derivation rules, and Sources for provider roles and provenance.
What KoreAves can and cannot tell you
- Can show
- Canonical bird identity, eligible regional record coverage, per-source support, regional evidence overlap between selected taxa, and the provenance needed to inspect those claims.
- Does not infer
- Abundance, population size, residency, breeding status, habitat preference, migration timing, continuous range or biological absence from missing records.
- Not an official distribution map
- KoreAves is an independent evidence atlas. Government and international datasets remain attributed source systems; their original portals remain authoritative for their own source products.
- Not a source-record mirror
- KoreAves publishes a derived evidence view, not a replacement download service for the underlying provider datasets.
Quick answers
- Does zero records mean the bird is absent?
- No. It means no eligible record is available in the analyzed dataset for that view.
- Are record counts abundance?
- No. Counts describe source records, not the number of birds or population density.
- Why can sources disagree?
- Providers differ in survey method, sampling coverage, taxonomic treatment and data eligibility. KoreAves preserves those differences instead of forcing unlike sources into one biological total.