Management actions in West Flanders, Belgium

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 5,666 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:

De Rycke P, Lejeune K, Reyserhove L, Huybrechts P, Desmet P (2026). Management actions in West Flanders, Belgium. Version 1.0. Province West Flanders. Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.inbo.be/resource?r=wfl-occurrences&v=1.0

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Province West Flanders. 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: a254720a-6dda-4c51-a61f-b21277c1fd0c.  Province West Flanders publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.

Keywords

Occurrence; Observation; West Flanders; IAS management; pest control; nuisance species; muskrat

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

West Flanders, Belgium

Taxonomic Coverage

Introduced and nuisance species, predominantly muskrat.

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

The spread of invasive alien species (IAS) is not hampered by administrative borders. Aquatic IAS, in particular, spread rapidly through the hydrographic network. To effectively control such species requires coordinated management at higher spatial scales. LIFE RIPARIAS (Reaching Integrated and Prompt Action in Response to Invasive Alien Species) aims to achieve such coordination across regional borders in Belgium, supported by open data and open infrastructure for early warning and management reporting. LIFE RIPARIAS aims at improving decision making on IAS management, early warning systems and management reporting tools. To this end, it develops an evidence-based workflow, translating national management objectives into concrete actions in an efficient manner. Ultimately the project aims at increasing the conservation status of aquatic and riparian habitats. More information on LIFE RIPARIAS is available at the project homepage: https://www.riparias.be.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

No Description available

Method step description:

1. Field managers record daily operations in a dedicated app.
2. A script periodically retrieves app data via WFS (see https://github.com/riparias/wfl-occurrences/blob/main/src/get_data.R).
3. Data are filtered for confirmed observations/catches of species of interest. This excludes operations where the presence of an animal/plant is uncertain (e.g. extra trap placed, beaver dam observed, etc.).
4. Data are transformed to Darwin Core (see https://github.com/riparias/wfl-occurrences/blob/main/src/dwc_mapping.R) and pushed to GitHub.
5. The INBO IPT is set to auto-publication and periodically retrieves the Darwin Core data from GitHub.
6. The dataset is (re)published to GBIF.

Additional Metadata