Description
Observations.be - Non-native species occurrences in Wallonia, Belgium is a species occurrence dataset published by Natagora. The dataset contains over 190,000 occurrences of animal, plant and fungal non-native species, recorded by volunteers (citizen scientists), mainly since 2008. The occurrences are derived from the database http://www.observations.be, an initiative from the nature conservation NGO Natagora (https://www.natagora.be) in collaboration with Stichting Natuurinformatie and Natuurpunt. Standardized information regarding the occurrence's sex, reproductiveCondition, behavior, occurrenceRemarks, and samplingProtocol is included as well. Issues with the dataset can be reported at https://github.com/trias-project/natagora-alien-occurrences
Generalized and/or withheld information: for some occurrences, location information is generalized to grid cells, as requested by the observer (usually to avoid disturbance or collecting). Observer name, toponyms, and photographs are not included in the published dataset, but are known in the source database.
We have released this dataset to the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver. We would appreciate however, if you read and follow these norms for data use (https://www.natagora.be/donnees_naturalistes_usage) and provide a link to the original data set 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 via biodata@natagora.be.
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 376,595 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:
Paquet J, Bronne L, Reyserhove L, Desmet P (2025). Observations.be - Non-native species occurrences in Wallonia, Belgium. Version 1.49. Natagora. Occurrence dataset. https://doi.org/10.15468/p58ip1
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Natagora. 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: 629befd5-fb45-4365-95c4-d07e72479b37. Natagora publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.
Keywords
Occurrence; non-native species; citizen science; Natagora; observations.be; observation.org; Wallonia; Observation; non-native species; invasive species; exotic species; plants; animals; fungi; Wallonia; observations; citizen science; Natagora; observations.be; observation.org; Occurrence
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator
- Head of Study Departement
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2068-7976
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Database officer
- Metadata Provider
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator
- Metadata Provider
- Data Publisher
Geographic Coverage
Walloon Region. This region is located in the south of Belgium and covers an area of 16,844 km².
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [49.49, 2.785], North East [50.823, 6.41] |
|---|
Taxonomic Coverage
No Description available
| Kingdom | Plantae (Plants), Animalia (Animals), Fungi (Fungi) |
|---|
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 1924-07-24 / 2030-12-31 |
|---|
Project Data
Imagine a future where dynamically, from year to year, we can track the progression of alien species (AS), identify emerging species, assess their current and future risk and timely inform policy in a seamless data-driven workflow. One that is built on open science and open data infrastructures. By using international biodiversity standards and facilities, we would ensure interoperability, repeatability and sustainability. This would make the process adaptable to future requirements in an evolving IAS policy landscape both locally and internationally. The project Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS) aims to do this for Belgium. For a full project description, see Vanderhoeven et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e13414).
| Title | Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS) |
|---|---|
| Identifier | TrIAS |
| Funding | TrIAS is funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) call for Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks (BRAIN). |
| Study Area Description | Belgium. |
| Design Description | The project builds on two components: 1) The establishment of a data mobilization framework for alien species data from diverse data sources and 2) the development of data-driven procedures for risk evaluation based on risk modelling, risk mapping and risk assessment. TrIAS uses facilities from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, http://www.gbif.org), standards from the Biodiversity Information Standards organization (TDWG, http://www.tdwg.org) and expertise from the Open science lab for biodiversity (https://twitter.com/oscibio) to create and facilitate a systematic workflow. Alien species data are gathered from a large set of regional, national and international initiatives, including citizen science data, with a wide taxonomic scope from marine, terrestrial and freshwater environments. Observation data are funnelled in repeatable ways to GBIF. In parallel, a Belgian checklist of alien species is established, benefiting from various taxonomic and project-based checklists foreseen for GBIF publication. |
The personnel involved in the project:
Sampling Methods
The observations (species, date, location, observer) were recorded by volunteers (citizen scientists) at http://www.observations.be. The dataset is a mixture of presence-only data and checklists.
| Study Extent | See geographic coverage. |
|---|---|
| Quality Control | 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 observations.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 is in references. |
Method step description:
- Not provided
Bibliographic Citations
- Vanderhoeven S, Adriaens T, Desmet P, Strubbe D, Backeljau T, Barbier Y, Brosens D, Cigar J, Coupremanne M, De Troch R, Eggermont H, Heughebaert A, Hostens K, Huybrechts P, Jacquemart A, Lens L, Monty A, Paquet J, Prévot C, Robertson T, Termonia P, Van De Kerchove R, Van Hoey G, Van Schaeybroeck B, Vercayie D, Verleye T, Welby S, Groom Q (2017) Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS): Building a data-driven framework to inform policy. Research Ideas and outcomes 3: e13414. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e13414
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 629befd5-fb45-4365-95c4-d07e72479b37 |
|---|---|
| https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=natagora-alien-occurrences |