DEMNA-DNE : Exotic animal occurrences in Wallonia, Belgium

DEMNA-DNE & collaborators1, Yvan Barbier2, Maxime Coupremanne3, Sonia Vanderhoeven3, Etienne Branquart4, Adrien Latli4, Roger Cammaerts5

1 Département d'Etude du Milieu Naturel et Agricole, Avenue Maréchal Juin, 23, B-5030, Gembloux, Belgium; 2 Department d'Etude du Milieu Naturel et Agricole, Avenue Maréchal Juin, 23, B-5030, Gembloux, Belgium; 3 Belgian Biodiversity Platform, Avenue Maréchal Juin, 23, B-5030, Gembloux, Belgium; 4 Département d'Etude du Milieu Naturel et Agricole, Avenue Maréchal Juin 23, B-5030, Gembloux, Belgium; 5 , Belgium

Corresponding author(s): DEMNA-DNE & collaborators, Yvan Barbier (yvan.barbier@spw.wallonie.be), Maxime Coupremanne (m.coupremanne@biodiversity.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

DEMNA-DNE : Exotic animal occurrences in Wallonia. v1. Service Public de Wallonie – Département d’Etude du Milieu Naturel et Agricole - Direction Nature et Eau (SPW – DEMNA - DNE). Dataset/Occurrence.  DOI10.15468/bcuhep

Abstract

"DEMNA-DNE : Exotic animal occurrences in Wallonia, Belgium" is a presence-only dataset, aggregating exotic fauna occurrences from various data sources maintained by the Département de l’Étude du Milieu Naturel et Agricole (SPW – DGARNE - DEMNA).
Original data sources compiled (listed below) are heterogeneous in the sense that they result from surveys performed by a variety of actors : Department officers, citizen observations, external partners. Attention should therefore be paid to the DC term: "CollectionCode” when figuring out the features of a given record. Also, geo-referencing should be carefuly done considering the term ‘FootprintWKT’ when given, as the dataset includes both grid-derived and point data.
Main original data sources are the following :
"Encodage en ligne OFFH" (12197 records) is the core encoding module of the Département de l’Étude du Milieu Naturel et Agricole (SPW – DGARNE - DEMNA). This encoding tool (http://observatoire.biodiversite.wallonie.be/encodage) is used by the department's officers, but also by third-party users registered in the system.
"Enquêtes OFFH"(669 records) are variants of the previous tool, specifically dedicated to survey exotic or invasive species. These specific surveys, set up by the Cellule interdépartementale Espèces invasives (CiEi), are open to the general public and can be found at :http://observatoire.biodiversite.wallonie.be/enquetes .
"Ecrevisses invasives" (1618 records) is a set of exotic crayfish data compiled and shared by Roger Cammaerts as part of the monitoring of crayfish populations in Wallonia.
All records have been validated by the department experts based on a set of rules relying on pictures, the observer’s taxonomic expertise, ecological relevance or additional information requested to the observer (see DC term :IdentificationVerificationStatus). 
This dataset content is under a CC-BY license. Please make sure to quote the Département de l’Étude du Milieu Naturel et Agricole (SPW – DGARNE - DEMNA) if you make any use of the data.
Please contact the department for additional information about the dataset or about our biodiversity/IAS related activities. Returns and comments are highly appreciated.

Keywords: Exotic species, Animalia, Département de l'Étude du Milieu naturel et agricole, Belgium, Wallonia, TrIAS project, Occurence

General description

Purpose: The dataset was published within the framework of the TrIAS project (Tracking Invasive Alien Species, Vanderhoeven et al. 2017 - http://trias-project.be) .The aim of TrIAS is to establish an open data framework to follow the progression of exotic species, identify emerging species, assess the risk and inform the IAS policies.
Additional information: This publication is to be updated on a yearly basis with new validated data integrated into the source databases and the inclusion of new exotic species in the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species - Belgium.

Project details

Project title: Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS)
Personnel: Tim Adriaens, Peter Desmet, Quentin Groom, Diederik Strubbe, Sonia Vanderhoeven
Funding: TrIAS is funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) call for Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks (BRAIN).
Study area descriptions/descriptor: 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 Lifewatch (http://www.lifewatch.be) 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.

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=demna_zooexot

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: The identification of exotic taxa has been done with reference to the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species - Belgium (DOI : 10.15468/xoidmd) implemented by the IAS experts of the department. The actual version covers 53 taxa identified at the  species level(51) or subspecies level (2).
Taxonomic ranks
Kingdom: Animalia
Common names: Animals

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: Wallonia, Southern Belgium. Occasionally, some data can be outstide the area, in neighboring regions or countries.
Coordinates: 49°26'45.6''N and 50°50'52.8''N Latitude; 2°54'10.8''E and 6°22'19.2''E Longitude 

Temporal coverage: September 10, 1902 - March 13, 2019

Methods

Method step description: 
- . 	Fusion of different animal occurrences data sources.
- . 	Selection of exotic animal taxa based on officers expertise and TrIAS Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species - Belgium.
- . 	Selection of validated occurrence data (see 'Quality Control'). 
- . 	Darwin Core formatting and publication.
Study extent description: Wallonia, Southern Belgium. Some opportunistic data may be slightly out of the described area. This dataset includes data from different projects that may also have very different time distributions.
Sampling description: Multiple sources involving different types of data collection. The dataset encompasses mainly citizen observations and expert surveys.
Quality control description: The validation of occurrence records is carried out by experts from the department. Each validator is assigned to a taxonomic group according to his expertise and has access to corresponding records. The validation may be based on a document (picture), on rules (credibility of the occurrence, of the observer expertise, etc.) or without any supporting document (additional informations provided by the observer). It is documented by the "DC-Term : IdentificationVerificationStatus". Only validated data are included in this publication. The Department is ISO9001 certified. 

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive DEMNA-DNE : Exotic animal occurrences in Wallonia, Belgium
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.biodiversity.be/archive.do?r=demna_zooexot
Publication date of data: 2019-07-04
Language: English
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2019-06-03
Hierarchy level: Dataset

References
Groom Q, Brosens D, Adriaens T, Vanderhoeven S (2017). TrIAS Data Management Plan. Version 1.2.
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  
Groom, Q., Desmet, P., Vanderhoeven, S. and Adriaens, T. The importance of open data for invasive alien species research, policy and management. Management of Biological Invasions 6, 2 (2015), 119–125. DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.3391/mbi.2015.6.2.02
Vanderhoeven, S., Adriaens, T., Desmet, P., Strubbe, D., & Davis, A. and Groom, Q. (2018). Mobilizing data to improve IAS policy - beyond good intentions. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15159.37285