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

Wouter Vanreusel1, Kristijn Swinnen1, Karin Gielen1, Diemer Vercayie1, Gerald Driessens1, Wim Veraghtert1, Peter Desmet2, Marc Herremans1

1 Natuurpunt Studie, , Belgium; 2 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), , Belgium

Corresponding author(s): Wouter Vanreusel (wouter.vanreusel@natuurpunt.be)Kristijn Swinnen (kristijn.swinnen@natuurpunt.be)Karin Gielen (karin.gielen@natuurpunt.be)Diemer Vercayie (diemer.vercayie@natuurpunt.be)Gerald Driessens (gerald.driessens@natuurpunt.be)Wim Veraghtert (wim.veraghtert@natuurpunt.be)Peter Desmet (peter.desmet@inbo.be)Marc Herremans (marc.herremans@natuurpunt.be)

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

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 1.113. Natuurpunt. Occurrence dataset. https://doi.org/10.15468/k2aiak https://doi.org/10.15468/k2aiak

Abstract

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.

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

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.inbo.be/resource?r=dieren-exoten-natuurpunt-occurrences

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: 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.
Taxonomic ranks
Kingdom: Animalia
Common names: animals

Spatial coverage

General spatial 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.
Coordinates: 50°40'12''N and 51°30'36''N Latitude; 2°31'48''E and 5°56'24''E Longitude 

Living time period: 1900-now

Methods

Method step description: Not provided.
Study extent description: See geographic coverage.
Sampling description: 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).
Quality control description: 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.

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Waarnemingen.be - Non-native animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.inbo.be/archive.do?r=dieren-exoten-natuurpunt-occurrences
Publication date of data: 2024-04-10
Language: English
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2017-04-21
Hierarchy level: Dataset

References
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