Snapshot Japan 2023: the first camera trap dataset under a globally standardised protocol in Japan

By

Fukasawa, Keita
Morosawa, Takahiro
Nakashima, Yoshihiro
Takagi, Shun
Yokoyama, Takumasa
Ando, Masaki
Iijima, Hayato
Saito, Masayuki
Kumada, Nao
Tochigi, Kahoko
Yoshioka, Akira
Funatsu, Satsuki
Koike, Shinsuke
Uno, Hiroyuki
Enomoto, Takaaki
Mcshea, William
Kays, Roland

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2025-3-13

Original Publication

Biodiversity data journal

Volume

13

Pages

1--24

Subjects

biodiversity monitoring , Bird , camera trap , East Asia , mammal , network , Snapshot

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft Publishers [2013]-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.13.e141168

 

Abstract

There is an urgent need to develop global observation networks to quantify biodiversity trends for evaluating achievements of targets of Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Camera traps are a commonly used tool, with the potential to enhance global observation networks for monitoring wildlife population trends and has the capacity to constitute global observation networks by applying a unified sampling protocol. The Snapshot protocol is simple and easy for camera trapping which is applied in North America and Europe. However, there is no regional camera-trap network with the Snapshot protocol in Asia.<br> We present the first dataset from a collaborative camera-trap survey using the Snapshot protocol in Japan conducted in 2023. We collected data at 90 locations across nine arrays for a total of 6162 trap-nights of survey effort. The total number of sequences with mammals and birds was 7967, including 20 mammal species and 23 avian species. Apart from humans, wild boar, sika deer and rodents were the most commonly observed taxa on the camera traps, covering 57.9% of all the animal individuals. We provide the dataset with a standard format of Wildlife Insights, but also with Camtrap DP 1.0 format. Our dataset can be used for a part of the global dataset for comparing relative abundances of wildlife and for a baseline of wildlife population trends in Japan. It can also used for training machine-learning models for automatic species identifications.