Code from: When and where do waterbirds need water? Inferring candidate restoration areas from spatio-temporal variation in surface water availability

Aim 
Globally, about 850 bird species depend on surface water habitats either year-round or during migration. However, large-scale analyses examining how different groups of waterbirds are associated with surface water across various regions and during different seasons are lacking. This study analyses this relationship using high-resolution satellite imagery to determine when and where surface water and associated resources might be improved.
 
Location
Western Palearctic (Europe, Middle East, Northern Africa)
 
Methods
We correlated monthly counts of 40 waterbird species with surface water availability in the Western Palearctic at a 100 x 100 km grid cell resolution. We then identified where and when surface water might be limiting for waterbird numbers, using waterbird count data and the most recent release of high-resolution satellite imagery from the Copernicus project.
 
Results 
Surface water availability was higher in the East-Atlantic flyway than in the..., , # Code from: When and where do waterbirds need water? Inferring candidate restoration areas from spatio-temporal variation in surface water availability

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.41ns1rnsw](10.5061/dryad.41ns1rnsw)

## Description of the data and file structure

This repository accompagnies the manuscript titled: When and where do waterbirds need water? A general approach for inferring candidate restoration areas from spatio-temporal variation in surface water availability. Submitted for review to Diversity and Distributions. This repository contains the R script (RScript_WhenAndWhereDoWaterbirdsNeedWater.Rmd), helper functions and package information to gather all the required data from openly-accessible free online sources (GBIF.org and Copernicus), compile and analyse the data and create the figures seen in the manuscript and supplementary information.

Main questions of the manuscript:

How does surface water area vary regionally and seasonally?\
How dependent are 40 waterbird sp...,