Characteristic Species of the NP Berchtesgaden
01.04.2022
By Fabian Wagner
Supervisor: Dr. Gesa Lüdecke
For my final project, I cooperated with my brother Sebastian Seibold, who is working in the national park Berchtesgaden on a biodiversity monitoring project. An important way to gather data is by setting up hundreds of picture traps spread out around the area of the park. These traps produce enormous amounts of images and allow estimation of species’ population numbers across different types of habitats. While the resulting statistics allow for interesting scientific work, an aspect that often falls short is presenting the results to a wider audience than just the scientific community. Part of my motivation was to try to contribute toward closing this gap.
During the project, I went to the NP to work with my brother and his team on the pictures. The monitoring is still far from complete, so while there were not yet any definite conclusions, some insights could already be gained. The question I was trying to address was whether the distribution of different characteristic species across different altitudes matches the literature. This is particularly interesting to study in Berchtesgaden, as the park spans an elevation difference of more than two thousand meters.
As a side project, I also created a database with the best images from the picture traps I came across. It should serve as a resource to anybody from the national park team trying to polish up a presentation or other material that is to be released to the public.
I then combined the results I found with the pictures and some information about the species to create an interactive map, which is publicly available.
I hope that it provides a nice overview of the most charismatic animal species visitors might observe in the park, while also giving insight into the scientific work performed by teams like my brother's.