Bird atlas as an indispensable monitoring tool: how the first one was conceived in Finland and implications for Iran

This paper summarizes discussion on the preparation of the first Bird Atlas in Finland (BAF) 30 years ago, along with references to more recent Bird Atlases in other countries. This discourse emphasises that atlasing is an exemplary process for producing an important monitoring tool that for recording environmental changes and threatened habitats in a given country and for monitoring ornithological biodiversity in a region. The essence of a bird atlas lies in what its maps can depict and what can be derived from them. Here, the essential components of the first BAF and subsequent Finnish atlases are described andexamples of bird distribution maps from a variety of sources are explained. A concise history of bird atlases can be derived from the cited examples, but the multiple references provide relevant source information for the ongoing process of the first Bird Atlas of Iran