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

Wouter Vanreusel1, Rutger Barendse2, Roosmarijn Steeman1, Karin Gielen1, Kristijn Swinnen1, Peter Desmet3, Marc Herremans1

1 Natuurpunt Studie, , Belgium; 2 Plantenwerkgroep Genk, , Belgium; 3 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), , Belgium

Corresponding author(s): Wouter Vanreusel (wouter.vanreusel@natuurpunt.be)Rutger Barendse (rutger.barendse@telenet.be)Roosmarijn Steeman (roosmarijn.steeman@natuurpunt.be)Karin Gielen (karin.gielen@natuurpunt.be)Kristijn Swinnen (kristijn.swinnen@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, Barendse R, Steeman R, Gielen K, Swinnen K, Desmet P, Herremans M, all working groups, species validators and observers (2016): Waarnemingen.be - Non-native plant occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium. v1.3. Natuurpunt. Dataset/Occurrence. https://doi.org/10.15468/smdvdo https://doi.org/10.15468/smdvdo

Abstract

Waarnemingen.be - Non-native plant 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 143,000 occurrences of 1,355 non-native plant, algae and fungi 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.
Generalized and/or withheld information: location information is generalized to 4 x 4 km² IFBL grid cells. Observer name, exact XY-coordinates, 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/smdvdo) 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 was supported by the INBO as part of the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch.

Keywords: Occurrence, Observation, plants, Chromista, Fungi, distribution, observations, citizen science, monitoring, collection, invasive, invasive species, naturalized, naturalizing, exotic, incidental import, Natuurpunt, waarnemingen.be

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

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: The dataset contains all plant, algae and fungi taxa recorded in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region which have the status naturalized, naturalizing, exotic, or incidental import in waarnemingen.be. This includes angiosperms (flowering plants), gymnosperms, ferns and allies, algae, mosses, lichens and fungi. This currently covers 1,351 plant, 2 Chromista and 2 fungi species (as well as a number of subspecies, varieties, forms, hybrids and multispecies).
Taxonomic ranks
Kingdom: Plantae, Fungi, Chromista
Common names: plants, mushrooms

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. All occurrence data are generalized to Instituut voor Floristiek van België en Luxemburg (IFBL) grid cells of 4 x 4 km², with the grid codes indicated in the field verbatimCoordinates. The WGS84 centroids of these grid cells are calculated in decimalLatitude/Longitude with a coordinateUncertaintyInMeters of 2,828 meters using Wieczorek et al. (2004).
Coordinates: 50°40'12''N and 51°30'36''N Latitude; 2°31'48''E and 5°56'24''E Longitude 

Temporal coverage: June 30, 1859 - December 31, 2016

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 dataset is a mixture of presence-only data, checklists and monitoring data.
Quality control description: Recorded data are constantly verified by a group of botanical experts (including professional botanists) 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. 21.6% of the plant records in this dataset are supported by photographs on waarnemingen.be. The validation status is indicated in the field identificationVerificationStatus.

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Waarnemingen.be - Non-native plant 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=planten-exoten-natuurpunt-occurrences
Publication date of data: 2018-09-21
Language: English
Licences of use: Public Domain (CC0 1.0)

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2016-10-17
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
Wieczorek J, Guo QG, Hijmans RJ (2004) The point-radius method for georeferencing locality descriptions and calculating associated uncertainty. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 18: 745–767. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658810412331280211