VIS - Estuarine monitoring in Flanders, Belgium (post 2013)

Data as a DwC-A file	download 1,083 records in English (752 KB) - Update frequency: annually
Metadata as an EML file	download in English (18 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file	download in English (15 KB)

Description

VIS - Estuarine monitoring in Flanders, Belgium (post 2013) is a sampling event dataset published by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). The dataset contains close to 32,000 fish occurrences sampled between 2013 and 2016 from 33 locations in the estuary of the river Yser and the part of the river Scheldt under tidal influence ("Zeeschelde"). The dataset includes over 60 fish species, as well as a number of non-target crustacean species. The data are retrieved from the Fish Information System (VIS), a database set up to monitor the status of fishes and their habitats in Flanders and are collected in support of the Water Framework Directive, the Habitat Directive, certain red lists, and biodiversity research. The VIS database is described in Brosens et al. 2015 (https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.475.8556). Additional information, such as measurements, absence information and abiotic data are available upon request. Issues with the dataset can be reported at https://github.com/inbo/data-publication/tree/master/datasets/vis-estuarine-monitoring-eventsLength and weight measurement data of the individual fishes, absence information, occurrence data since 2015, as well as abiotic data of the sampling points (pH, temperature, etc.) are not included in the Darwin Core Archive and are available upon request.We 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.inbo.be/en/norms-for-data-use) and provide a link to the original dataset (https://doi.org/10.15468/jhv16z) 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 know how you have used or visualized the data, or to provide more information, so please contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata, opendata@inbo.be or https://twitter.com/oscibio.

Data Records

The data in this sampling event 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 1,083 records.

1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

1083

103274

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:

Breine J, Brosens D, Desmet P (2026). VIS - Estuarine monitoring in Flanders, Belgium (post 2013). Version 1.18. Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). Samplingevent dataset. https://doi.org/10.15468/jhv16z

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 702973cf-6935-45bf-ba31-cecee3571cf9. Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.

Keywords

Samplingevent; occurrence; ecosystem functioning; fish-based index of biotic integrity; fish distribution; brackish water; estuary; open data; River Scheldt; River Yser; Zeeschelde; Samplingevent

Contacts

Jan Breine

Originator ●
Point Of Contact

Researcher

Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)

Linkebeek

Flemish Brabant

jan.breine@inbo.be

Dimitri Brosens

Metadata Provider ●
Originator

Data liaison officer

Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)

Kliniekstraat 25

1070 Brussels

Brussels Capital Region

dimitri.brosens@inbo.be

http://www.biodiversity.be

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0846-9116

Peter Desmet

Metadata Provider

Data lab coordinator

Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)

Kliniekstraat 25

1070 Brussels

Brussels Capital Region

peter.desmet@inbo.be

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8442-8025

Geographic Coverage

Estuary of the river Yser and the part of the river Scheldt under tidal influence ("Zeeschelde") in Flanders, Belgium.

Bounding Coordinates	South West [50.68, 2.54], North East [51.51, 4.59]

Taxonomic Coverage

The dataset contains more than 60 fish species found in the estuaries of the rivers Yser and Scheldt, as well as 10 non-target crustacean and 2 gastropod species. The class of Actinopterygii is most represented (55 species). All the crustaceans in this dataset are from the order of the Decapoda.

Kingdom	Animalia
Class	Actinopterygii, Malacostraca, Gastropoda

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date	2013-01-01 / 2024-01-01

Sampling Methods

Standardized sampling methods were used as described in Belpaire et al. (2000) and Van Thuyne & Breine (2010) and are specified in the dataset as dwc:samplingProtocol. Per water body, the same method was used for each sampling event. The default method is paired fyke netting, which has been intercalibrated by the North East Atlantic Calibration Group, but additional techniques such as anchor netting, seine netting, pound netting, electric fishing, and eel fyke netting were used as well (Breine et al. 2011). All fishes were identified to species level, counted and their length and weight was measured. Fyke nets are relatively unselective fishing gear catching demersal and pelagic species (Hamerlynck and Hostens 1994) and also they are easy to install in a great variety of habitat types. As few studies compare fyke catches with other gear (e.g. Hinz 1989, Thiel and Potter 2001), we compared presence/absence data obtained with fyke nets with presence/absence data of fish impinged at cooling-water filter screens of the nuclear power plant of Doel situated in the study area. The data was collected in the same period between 1995 and 1998. During this period we collected the same species with both survey methods but the species richness per day per fyke net was generally higher than that obtained on the filter screens (Breine et al. 2007). In addition preliminary results from a gear intercalibration exercise in different estuaries in Ireland (Whyte et al. 2007) indicated that for species diversity, the results of fyke net catches are comparable to those obtained with other gear (beach seine, beam trawl, otter trawl).

Study Extent	Over 2,000 locations in estuaries, inland rivers, streams, canals, and enclosed waters in Flanders, Belgium have been sampled, from March to November, since 1992. In 2001, these locations were consolidated in a monitoring network (“VISmeetnet”) of 900 sampling points. Four locations in the Yser estuary and 43 locations in the Zeeschelde were sampled since 1995. While the Yser estuary only covers a small geographical area, the Scheldt estuary is with 33,000 hectares one of the largest estuaries in Europe. It is also one of the few remaining European estuaries that includes the entire gradient from fresh to saltwater tidal areas (Van den Bergh et al. 2009). The 43 sampling locations in the Scheldt estuary are mainly located in the Zeeschelde, but also in the Rivers Durme, Rupel, Dijle, Zenne and Nete. The geographic coordinates in the dataset are those of the defined sampling locations (dwc:locationID). However, as these coordinates are not always exact the actual coordinates of the catch, which may be located further up- or downriver, the coordinate uncertainty (dwc:coordinateUncertaintyInMeters) has been set to 250 meter.
Quality Control	Strict field protocols where used. The Manual for Application of the European Fish Index (EFI) (Fame consortium 2004) served as a guideline for electrofishing and was used in support of the EU water framework directive.

Study Extent

Over 2,000 locations in estuaries, inland rivers, streams, canals, and enclosed waters in Flanders, Belgium have been sampled, from March to November, since 1992. In 2001, these locations were consolidated in a monitoring network (“VISmeetnet”) of 900 sampling points. Four locations in the Yser estuary and 43 locations in the Zeeschelde were sampled since 1995. While the Yser estuary only covers a small geographical area, the Scheldt estuary is with 33,000 hectares one of the largest estuaries in Europe. It is also one of the few remaining European estuaries that includes the entire gradient from fresh to saltwater tidal areas (Van den Bergh et al. 2009). The 43 sampling locations in the Scheldt estuary are mainly located in the Zeeschelde, but also in the Rivers Durme, Rupel, Dijle, Zenne and Nete. The geographic coordinates in the dataset are those of the defined sampling locations (dwc:locationID). However, as these coordinates are not always exact the actual coordinates of the catch, which may be located further up- or downriver, the coordinate uncertainty (dwc:coordinateUncertaintyInMeters) has been set to 250 meter.

Quality Control

Strict field protocols where used. The Manual for Application of the European Fish Index (EFI) (Fame consortium 2004) served as a guideline for electrofishing and was used in support of the EU water framework directive.

Method step description:

Water type: Estuaries Method: fyke fishing, anchor netting, pound netting, electric fishing Effort: Fykes: 2 paired nets for two successive days per site. Winged fyke: one per site for two successive days. Anchor netting: per site 4 surveys of one hour (two for each tide). Electric fishing: only in flood control areas (250 m shore transects/ha).

Bibliographic Citations

Brosens D, Breine J, Van Thuyne G, Belpaire C, Desmet P, Verreycken H (2015) VIS – A database on the distribution of fishes in inland and estuarine waters in Flanders, Belgium. ZooKeys 475: 119-145. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.475.8556 https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.475.8556

Additional Metadata

Purpose
Alternative Identifiers	702973cf-6935-45bf-ba31-cecee3571cf9
	https://ipt.inbo.be/resource?r=vis-estuarine-monitoring-events