RATO - daily operations commissioned by the province East Flanders, Belgium

Anke Stefens1, Karel Van Moer1, Lien Reyserhove2, Damiano Oldoni3

1 Rattenbestrijding Oost-Vlaanderen vzw (RATO vzw), , Belgium; 2 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), , Belgium; 3 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), 

Corresponding author(s): Anke Stefens (rato@oost-vlaanderen.be)Karel Van Moer (rato@oost-vlaanderen.be)Lien Reyserhove (lien.reyserhove@inbo.be)Damiano Oldoni (damiano.oldoni@inbo.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.

Abstract

The RATO - daily operations commissioned by the Province East Flanders, Belgium dataset is an event dataset published by RATO. The dataset includes data on management actions on invasive alien species and nuisance species, predominantly in the province of East Flanders and from 2021 onwards. Here it is published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive and includes for each occurrence record an occurrenceID, date, location, scientific name, sampling protocol, sampling effort and the number of recorded individuals or biomass. Issues with the dataset can be reported at https://github.com/riparias/rato-occurrences/issues.
We have released this dataset to the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver. We would appreciate it if you follow the INBO norms for data use (https://www.inbo.be/en/norms-data-use) when using the data. If you have any questions regarding this dataset, don't hesitate to contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or via opendata@inbo.be.
This dataset was published as open data for the LIFE RIPARIAS project (Reaching Integrated and Prompt Action in Response to Invasive Alien Species https://www.riparias.be/), with technical support provided by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO).

Keywords: Occurrence, Observation, RATO, IAS, pest control, nuisance species, muskrat, East-Flanders, brown rat

Project details

Project title: Reaching Integrated and Prompt Action in Response to Invasive Alien Species (LIFE RIPARIAS)
Personnel: Tim Adriaens, Etienne Branquart, Peter Desmet, Dido Gossee, Jérémie Guyon, Lien Reyserhove, Sonia Vanderhoeven, Xavier Vermeersch
Funding: LIFE RIPARIAS is co-funded by the three Belgian regions and the European Union in the framework of the LIFE Programme (LIFE19 NAT/BE/000953). It is running from 2021 to 2026.
Study area descriptions/descriptor: Dijle, Mark and Zenne river basin of the Scheldt district, Belgium.
Design description: LIFE RIPARIAS focuses on aquatic and riparian plants as well as crayfish species located in the Dijle, Mark and Zenne river basin of the Scheldt district in Belgium. Cumulative observation data collected in 2000-2015, completed by data gathered from field surveillance in 2021-2022, will provide the baseline to design management objectives and define quantitative targets.

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

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: Invasive alien species and nuisance species, mainly muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) and brown rat (Rattus norvegicus)
Taxonomic ranks
Kingdom: Animalia, Plantae
Common names: animals, plants

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: East Flanders
Coordinates: 50°40'12''N and 51°30'36''N Latitude; 2°31'48''E and 5°54'0''E Longitude 

Temporal coverage: October 12, 2021 - June 24, 2022

Methods

Method step description: 
- . 	A WFS export of the database was generated by RATO and uploaded to a GitHub repository (https://github.com/riparias/rato-occurrences/tree/master/data/raw).
- . 	We developed a Rmarkdown script to document and perform the transformation of the data to Darwin Core, which includes the following steps:
- . 	Perform some basic data cleaning of the raw data.
- . 	Create an occurrence core file (http://rs.gbif.org/core/dwc_occurrence_2015-07-02.xml)
- . 	The Darwin Core data file is uploaded to the INBO IPT and documented with metadata.
- . 	The dataset is published and registered with GBIF.

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive RATO - daily operations commissioned by the province East Flanders, Belgium
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.inbo.be/archive.do?r=rato-occurrences
Publication date of data: 2024-04-08
Language: English
Licences of use: Public Domain (CC0 1.0)

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2022-09-27
Hierarchy level: Dataset