These are the data on roadkilled vertebrates from the citizen science project Roadkill (https://roadkill.at/en/) collected in the years 2014-2023, which correspond to quality level 1. Quality level 2 data are published via Zenodo and can be found here: https://zenodo.org/record/5878813#.YegX2y9Xb0o.

A description of the data collection method can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01599-6

Every other day, data entered into the Roadkill project were validated by members of the project team to correct incorrect or inconsistent entries via the backend of the website or, if the record cannot be corrected, to delete the record. Correction of data was done (i) by the project team itself when errors were obvious (e.g., animal in the submitted image does not match the species identification listed) or (ii) by the participants themselves after being informed by the project team that a correction is needed (e.g., if the roadkill is not on a road). Since the participants collected the data during their daily routine, the submitted data are so-called presence-only data.

To ensure the quality of the data, we used a stepwise selection process that allowed us to classify the submitted data into three quality levels at the end of this process:

Quality Level 1: Records with correct species identification (either by experts or by images) and consistent data.
Quality level 2: Records with consistent data, but no possible validation of the species
Deleted: records with inconsistent data and no possible validation of the species

We thank all the citizen scientists who reported the data and helped identify the species. Without the voluntary work of the citizen scientists this project would not be possible.

GBIF url: https://www.gbif.org/dataset/d0d5ef85-71b2-4da6-b6f6-c1c3d60987d3
Citation: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (2024). Roadkill. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/ejb47y accessed via GBIF.org on 2025-02-20.