Atlas-Logo Atlas der Verbreitung palaearktischer Vögel

Übersicht

Geschichte

Ziele

Lieferungen

Arten

Bestellung

Mitarbeit

Spende

Impressum

English

Atlas of the distribution of palearctic birds

The project "Atlas of the distribution of palearctic birds" was founded by the famous German ornithologist Erwin Stresemann in the nineteen fifties, and from 1960 onwards 20 issues were published treating now 226 species. The aim of this atlas project initially was and still is to delimit distributional boundaries of palearctic bird species as meticulous as possible. The unparalleled excellency of this long-lasting project is its accuracy in documentation every single record mentioned. However, in such a vast area as is the palearctic, it is impossible to search and document every record published. This is only the case in species settling extremely small areas or in such species which occupy areas which are highly fragmented and scattered over larger territories. In most cases, the borderline records are documented as to finally find out the actual (and/or past) area limits. All the outlying/peripheral records are numbered and the related bibliography is presented in detailed lists and, from issue 20 onwards, includes also the coordinates. So every finding can be traced to its origin. Over the decades, the Curator of the Ornithological Section of the St. Petersburg Museum of the Russian Academy of Science was a co-editor and often also co-author. Also in this last issue Russian ornithologists largely contributed to the results. This is the more inevitable as the huge and highly split Russian (formerly Soviet) ornithological literature is hardly to be correctly surveyed by westerners. A further step to better investigate the rich east palearctic avifauna is to incorporate also Chinese scientists, and this luckily happened in the present Lieferung. Stresemann, roughly a century ago, had the correct guiding view: Such atlas projects as the present one are indispensable tools not only for ornithologists but also for ecologists, conservationists, evolutionists, biogeographers and systematists. Today, nearly every field guide offers distributional maps, but, according to the circumstances, they are not precise enough, mostly even poor, and are not a basis at all for further scientific purposes.

Treated species (in German)

Published issues (in German)

Order now!