Waarnemingen.be - Bird occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium

Kristof Van Asten1, Nils Bouillard1, Gerald Driessens1, Rudi Dujardin1, Pieter Van Dorsselaer1, Carlo Vanderydt1, Jonas Ghyselen1, Koen Maes1, Robin Vermylen1, Luc Teugels1, Joachim Pintens1, Peter Adriaens2, Emmanuel Desmet1, Carlos Van De Ginste1, Vincent Leirens1, Serge Allein1, Peter Symens3, Wouter Faveyts1, Diane Appels1, Alain De Broyer4, Pieter Moysons1, Geert Meganck1, Kris De Keersmaecker1, Dominique Verbelen1, Walter Hamelinck1, Kelle Moreau5, Geert Beckers1, Hisko de Vries6, Stijn Baeten1, Karin Gielen1, Wouter Vanreusel1, Marc Herremans1, Peter Desmet7, Kristijn Swinnen1

1 Natuurpunt Studie, , Belgium; 2 Corridor, , Belgium; 3 Natuurpunt Beleid, , Belgium; 4 Natagora, , Belgium; 5 RBINS / OD Natuur, , Belgium; 6 Zostera, , Netherlands; 7 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), , Belgium

Corresponding author(s): Kristof Van Asten (kristof.van.asten@gmail.com)Nils Bouillard (nils.bouillard@gmail.com)Gerald Driessens (gerald.driessens@natuurpunt.be)Rudi Dujardin (rudi.dujardin@aves.be)Pieter Van Dorsselaer (pieter.vandorsselaer@natuurpunt.be)Carlo Vanderydt (carlo.vanderydt@pandora.be)Jonas Ghyselen (jonasghyselen93@gmail.com)Koen MaesRobin Vermylen (robinvermylen77@gmail.com)Luc Teugels (luc_mieke@skynet.be)Joachim Pintens (joachim.pintens@yahoo.com)Peter Adriaens (p_adriaens@yahoo.com)Emmanuel Desmet (emmanuel-desmet@skynet.be)Carlos Van De Ginste (carlos.vandeginste@gmail.com)Vincent Leirens (vincentleirens@gmail.com)Serge Allein (serge.allein@skynet.be)Peter Symens (peter.symens@natuurpunt.be)Wouter Faveyts (wouter.faveyts@telenet.be)Diane Appels (diane.appels@skynet.be)Alain De Broyer (adebroyer@yahoo.fr)Pieter Moysons (pieter.moysons@gmail.com)Geert Meganck (overmeersevogels@telenet.be)Kris De Keersmaecker (kris_kdk76@yahoo.com)Dominique Verbelen (dominique.verbelen@natuurpunt.be)Walter Hamelinck (wal.ham@telenet.be)Kelle Moreau (kelle.moreau@gmail.com)Geert Beckers (geertbeckers@yahoo.com)Hisko de Vries (hiskodevries@gmail.com)Stijn Baeten (stijn.baeten@yahoo.com)Karin Gielen (karin.gielen@natuurpunt.be)Wouter Vanreusel (wouter.vanreusel@natuurpunt.be)Marc Herremans (marc.herremans@natuurpunt.be)Peter Desmet (peter.desmet@inbo.be)Kristijn Swinnen (kristijn.swinnen@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

Van Asten K, Bouillard N, Driessens G, Dujardin R, Van Dorsselaer P, Vanderydt C, Ghyselen J, Maes K, Vermylen R, Teugels L, Pintens J, Adriaens P, Desmet E, Van De Ginste C, Leirens V, Allein S, Symens P, Faveyts W, Appels D, De Broyer A, Moysons P, Meganck G, De Keersmaecker K, Verbelen D, Hamelinck W, Moreau K, Beckers G, de Vries H, Baeten S, Gielen K, Vanreusel W, Herremans M, Desmet P, Swinnen K, all bird observers (2019): Waarnemingen.be - Bird occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium. v1.3. Natuurpunt. Dataset/Occurrence. https://doi.org/10.15468/0mbhvd https://doi.org/10.15468/0mbhvd

Abstract

Waarnemingen.be - Bird occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium is a species occurrence dataset published by Natuurpunt. The dataset contains over 12.8 million bird (Aves) occurrences of 445 naturally occurring species (native, vagrant or migrant 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 sex, lifeStage, behavior, occurrenceRemarks, and samplingProtocol are included as well.
Generalized and/or withheld information: location information is generalized to 5 x 5 km² Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) 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/10.15468/0mbhvd) 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, birds, Aves, distribution, observations, citizen science, Natuurpunt, waarnemingen.be, observation.org

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

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: The dataset contains 445 naturally occurring bird (Aves) species (as well as a number of subspecies, hybrids and multispecies) recorded in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region. This includes species that are native, vagrant or migrant.
Taxonomic ranks
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Common names: animals, birds

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 grid cells of 5 x 5 km² of the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system, 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 3,536 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: May 15, 1790 - December 31, 2018

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 taking collection specimens, the observer’s species knowledge, added photographs and known species list of locations into account. The validation procedure from www.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. 5% of the observations in this dataset are supported by photographs on www.waarnemingen.be. 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 - Bird 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=vogels-natuurpunt-occurrences
Publication date of data: 2019-07-19
Language: English
Licences of use: Public Domain (CC0 1.0)

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2019-06-04
Hierarchy level: Dataset

References
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