Waarnemingen.be – Non-native plant and animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium

Swinnen, Kristijn R.R.; Vercayie, Diemer; Vanreusel, Wouter; Barendse, Rutger; Boers, Kris; Bogaert, Jo; Dekeukeleire, Daan; Driessens, Gerald; Dupriez, Pascal; Jooris, Robert; Steeman, Roosmarijn; Asten, Kristof Van; Neucker, Tom Van den; Dorsselaer, Pieter Van; Vooren, Pierre Van; Wysmantel, Nico; Gielen, Karin; Desmet, Peter; Herremans, Marc

doi:10.3391/bir.2018.7.3.17

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…On the other hand, a low number of projects, e.g., in the Netherlands and Belgium, may be explained by the presence of single, dominant national biodiversity portals not being included in our survey. For example, in Belgium, biodiversity recording is dominated by the general reporting portal www.waarnemingen.be which has a dedicated app and upon which early warning tools for IAS are built (Vanderhoeven et al 2015;Swinnen et al 2018). Additionally, there is a possible language bias, if projects from non-English speaking countries were not reached or not motivated to participate in the survey, which was only available in English.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe

Price-Jones¹,

Brown²,

Adriaens³

et al. 2022

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Invasive alien species (IAS) are a key driver of global biodiversity loss. Reducing their spread and impact is a target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG target 15.8) and of the EU IAS Regulation 1143/2014. The use of citizen science offers various benefits to alien species’ decision-making and to society, since public participation in research and management boosts awareness, engagement and scientific literacy and can reduce conflict in IAS management. We report the results of a survey on alien species citizen science initiatives within the framework of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action Alien-CSI. We gathered metadata on 103 initiatives across 41 countries, excluding general biodiversity reporting portals, spanning from 2005 to 2020, offering the most comprehensive account of alien species citizen science initiatives on the continent to date. We retrieved information on project scope, policy relevance, engagement methods, data capture, data quality and data management, methods and technologies applied and performance indicators such as the number of records coming from projects, the numbers of participants and publications. The 103 initiatives were unevenly distributed geographically, with countries with a tradition of citizen science showing more active projects. The majority of projects were contributory and were run at a national scale, targeting the general public, alien plants and insects, and terrestrial ecosystems. These factors of project scope were consistent between geographic regions. Most projects focused on collecting species presence or abundance data, aiming to map presence and spread. As 75% of the initiatives specifically collected data on IAS of Union Concern, citizen science in Europe is of policy relevance. Despite this, only half of the projects indicated sustainable funding. Nearly all projects had validation in place to verify species identifications. Strikingly, only about one third of the projects shared their data with open data repositories such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility or the European Alien Species Information Network. Moreover, many did not adhere to the principles of FAIR data management. Finally, certain factors of engagement, feedback and support, had significant impacts on project performance, with the provision of a map with sightings being especially beneficial. Based on this dataset, we offer suggestions to strengthen the network of IAS citizen science projects and to foster knowledge exchange among citizens, scientists, managers, policy-makers, local authorities, and other stakeholders.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe

Price-Jones¹,

Brown²,

Adriaens³

et al. 2022

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“…The positive impact of using approved observations for birds, and especially for species with a restricted range size, can be linked to the mechanism of record verification in the database (Swinnen et al, 2018), whereby records that can be verified by photograph or sound play an important role. The verification procedure consists of two main steps: (1) automated record validation by either image recognition or both spatial and temporal proximity of new records to existing approved records and (2) manual expert verification (when there is uncertainty in step 1).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Potential seasonal changes in habitat occupancy or range size were not considered. The selection excluded records verified as incorrect by species experts or the data platform's auto-validation system (Swinnen et al, 2018) and records from non-native or nonbreeding birds in Flanders (Vermeersch et al, 2020). Opportunistic presence-only data were used for model training, also excluding absences (zero-counts), and semi-structured data for model testing (Van Eupen et al, 2021).…”

Section: Species Data and Impact Of Quality Filteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species profiles support recommendations for quality filtering of opportunistic citizen science data

Eupen

Maes

Herremans³

et al. 2022

Ecological Modelling

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“…Since 2008, after the launch of the online reporting portal 3 and its mobile phone applications by the conservation NGO Natuurpunt (cf. Swinnen et al, 2018), paper recording was replaced by online recording which greatly increased the number of ladybird observations, the speed of record submission, the number of volunteers as well as the spatial resolution and quality of ladybird records. As this platform is well established for recording, the European Ladybird App is anticipated to be used less used in Belgium by the established naturalist community, though it might still appeal to people wanting to increase their ladybird identification skills, wanting to contribute to European ladybird mapping specifically, as well as to a crowd outside the classical recording community.…”

Section: Belgiummentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of the European Ladybirds Smartphone Application: A Tool for Citizen Science

et al. 2021

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Wildlife observations submitted by volunteers through citizen science initiatives are increasingly used within research and policy. Ladybirds are popular and charismatic insects, with most species being relatively easy to identify from photographs. Therefore, they are considered an appropriate taxonomic group for engaging people through citizen science initiatives to contribute long-term and large-scale datasets for use in many different contexts. Building on the strengths of a mass participation citizen science survey on ladybirds in the United Kingdom, we have developed a mobile application for ladybird recording and identification across Europe. The main aims of the application are to: (1) compile distribution data for ladybird species throughout Europe, and use this to assess changes in distribution over time; (2) connect and engage people in nature and increase awareness about the diversity and ecological importance of ladybirds. In developing the application we first constructed a database including ladybird species from the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal with associated information on relevant morphological features (e.g., size, main color, pronotum pattern) to inform identification. Additionally, the species were assessed on the basis of probability of occurrence within each country which enables users to reduce the number of species to only those with relevance to the location of the recorder. This is amongst the first collaborative citizen science approaches aimed at involving participants across Europe in recording a group of insects. In the near future, we aim to expand the use of the application to all countries in Europe.

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Waarnemingen.be – Non-native plant and animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe

Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe

Species profiles support recommendations for quality filtering of opportunistic citizen science data

Development of the European Ladybirds Smartphone Application: A Tool for Citizen Science

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Waarnemingen.be – Non-native plant and animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium

Cited by 12 publications

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﻿Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe

﻿Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe

Species profiles support recommendations for quality filtering of opportunistic citizen science data

Development of the European Ladybirds Smartphone Application: A Tool for Citizen Science

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe

Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe