Waarnemingen.be - Non-native animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium

Occurrence
Latest version published by Natuurpunt on Nov 20, 2024 Natuurpunt
Publication date:
20 November 2024
Published by:
Natuurpunt
License:
CC-BY-NC 4.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 1,380,320 records in English (49 MB) - Update frequency: weekly
Metadata as an EML file download in English (18 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (12 KB)

Description

Waarnemingen.be - Non-native animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium is a species occurrence dataset published by Natuurpunt and described (v1.2) in Swinnen et al. (2018, https://doi.org/10.3391/bir.2018.7.3.17). The dataset contains over 900,000 occurrences of non-native animal species, recorded by volunteers (citizen scientists), mainly since 2008. The occurrences are derived from the database http://www.waarnemingen.be, hosted at the nature conservation NGO Natuurpunt in collaboration with Stichting Natuurinformatie. Standardized information regarding the occurrence's sex, lifeStage, reproductiveCondition, behavior, occurrenceRemarks, and samplingProtocol is included as well.

Generalized and/or withheld information: since dataset v1.4 location information is no longer generalized to grid cells, but provided as the original decimalLatitude/Longitude and coordinateUncertaintyInMeters for all occurrences. Observer name, toponyms, and photographs are not included in the published dataset, but are known in the source database.

To allow anyone to use this dataset, we have released the data to the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). We would appreciate however, if you read and follow these norms for data use (http://www.natuurpunt.be/normen-voor-datagebruik) and provide a link to the original dataset (https://doi.org/10.15468/k2aiak) whenever possible. If you use these data for a scientific paper, please cite the dataset following the applicable citation norms and/or consider us for co-authorship. We are always interested to provide more information or know how you have used the data, so please contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or natuurdata@natuurpunt.be.

The publication of this dataset is supported by INBO and funded by Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) as part of the Belgian contribution to LifeWatch.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 1,380,320 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Vanreusel W, Swinnen K, Gielen K, Vercayie D, Driessens G, Veraghtert W, Desmet P, Herremans M, all working groups, species validators and observers (2024). Waarnemingen.be - Non-native animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium. Version 1.138. Natuurpunt. Occurrence dataset. https://doi.org/10.15468/k2aiak

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Natuurpunt. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 9a0b66df-7535-4f28-9f4e-5bc11b8b096c.  Natuurpunt publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.

Keywords

Occurrence; Observation; non-native species; invasive species; exotic species; animals; distribution; observations; citizen science; Natuurpunt; waarnemingen.be; observation.org

Contacts

Wouter Vanreusel
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
Natuurpunt Studie
BE
Kristijn Swinnen
Karin Gielen
  • Originator
Natuurpunt Studie
BE
Diemer Vercayie
Gerald Driessens
Wim Veraghtert
  • Originator
Natuurpunt Studie
BE
Peter Desmet
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
BE
Marc Herremans
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
Natuurpunt Studie
BE
all working groups, species validators and observers

Geographic Coverage

Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region. These regions are situated in the north of Belgium and cover an area of 13,522 km² and 162 km² respectively (13,684 km² in total or 45% of the Belgian territory). Flanders is largely covered by agricultural land and urban areas while the Brussels Capital Region is mainly urban.

Bounding Coordinates South West [50.67, 2.53], North East [51.51, 5.94]

Taxonomic Coverage

The dataset contains all animal taxa recorded in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region which have the status naturalized, naturalizing, exotic, or incidental import in waarnemingen.be.

Kingdom Animalia (animals)

Temporal Coverage

Living Time Period 1900-now

Sampling Methods

The observations (species, date, location, observer) were recorded by volunteers (citizen scientists) at http://www.waarnemingen.be. The dataset also includes historical records and datasets imported in waarnemingen.be. The majority of the data are presence-only data (absence data are not included in this dataset).

Study Extent See geographic coverage.
Quality Control Recorded data are constantly verified by species group specialists (including professionals) taking collection specimens, the observer’s species knowledge, added photographs and known species list of locations into account. The validation procedure from waarnemingen.be consists of an interactive procedure in which observers can be asked for additional information by a team of validators, after which the validator manually adds a validation status. Records that are not manually validated are additionally checked by an automated validation procedure that takes into account the number of manually validated observations within a specified date and distance range. The validation status is indicated in the field identificationVerificationStatus, the link to the original record in references.

Method step description:

  1. Not provided.

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Swinnen K, Vercayie D, Vanreusel W, Barendse R, Boers K, Bogaert J, Dekeukeleire D, Driessens G, Dupriez P, Jooris R, Steeman R, Van Asten K, Van Den Neucker T, Van Dorsselaer P, Van Vooren P, Wysmantel N, Gielen K, Desmet P, Herremans M, all working groups, species validators and recorders Waarnemingen.be (2018) Waarnemingen.be – Non-native plant and animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium. BioInvasions Records 7(3): 335–342. https://doi.org/10.3391/bir.2018.7.3.17

Additional Metadata

Alternative Identifiers 9a0b66df-7535-4f28-9f4e-5bc11b8b096c
https://ipt.inbo.be/resource?r=dieren-exoten-natuurpunt-occurrences