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

Dataset type

Deze dataset bevat primaire waarnemingsgegevens voor soorten.

Beschrijving

Waarnemingen.be - Plant occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium is a species occurrence dataset published by Natuurpunt and described (v1.4) in Steeman et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.85.14925). The dataset contains over 2.3 million plant occurrences of almost 1,300 naturally occurring species (native, vagrant or migrant species), recorded by volunteers (citizen scientists), mainly since 2008. Together with the datasets Van Landuyt & Brosens (2017, http://www.gbif.org/dataset/271c444f-f8d8-4986-b748-e7367755c0c1) and Van Landuyt & Noé (2015, https://doi.org/10.15468/xnlbke), the dataset represents the most complete overview of indigenous plants in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region (north Belgium). 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 the occurrence's sex, reproductiveCondition, behavior, occurrenceRemarks, and samplingProtocol is included as well. 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/fyuklz) 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.

Geografische beschrijving

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).

Doel

Plants have a long history of being recorded by both amateur and professional botanists. Volunteer data from amateur botanists were always an important source of distribution data of plants. The atlas of Flanders and the Brussels Capital region (Van Landuyt et al. 2006) was based on the teamwork of many volunteer botanists, NGOs, scientific institutes and governmental organisations. Since Natuurpunt, the largest nature conservation NGO in Flanders, Belgium, launched the web portal waarnemingen.be in 2008, the number of plant observations in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region has risen sharply. Beside IFBL-mapping and project-related observations, this database is easily used for occasional observations and can be used for monitoring (wildlife) areas. Old notebooks and reports were screened and stored in the database (Steeman et al. 2012). The team of specialized validators motivates the inexperienced observers and validates observations. Here we publish these records on a IFBL (Instituut voor Floristiek van België en Luxemburg) grid cell resolution of 4 × 4 km².

Gegevenskwaliteit

Recorded data are constantly verified by species group specialists (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 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. 10% 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.

Methoden

Not provided.

Type inhoud

Omvat: Puntvoorkomstengegevens.

Bronvermelding

Steeman R, Vanreusel W, Barendse R, Verloove F, Wysmantel N, Van den Bussche W, Gyselinck T, Hendrickx P, Zwaenepoel A, Van Vooren P, Desmet P, Gielen K, Herremans M, Swinnen K, all plant working groups and plant observers (2021): Waarnemingen.be - Plant occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium. v1.8. Natuurpunt. Dataset/Occurrence. https://doi.org/10.15468/fyuklz

Rechten

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.

Gedigitaliseerde records

Metadata voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 2025-06-23 11:56:21.0