Published October 10, 2019 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Improving Darwin Core for research and management of alien species

  • 1. Meise Botanic Garden, Meise, Belgium
  • 2. |Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), Brussels, Belgium
  • 3. Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), Brussels, Belgium|
  • 4. Belgian Biodiversity Platform, Brussels, Belgium|
  • 5. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America|
  • 6. Australian Biodiversity Information Services, Ballan, Australia|
  • 7. |Monash University, School of Biological Sciences, Clayton, Australia
  • 8. |Bio5 Institute and CyVerse, University of Arizona, Tucson, United States of America
  • 9. Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, United States of America|
  • 10. |Centre for Invasion Biology, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa|South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch, South Africa
  • 11. Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires (IEGEBA-CONICET), University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina|
  • 12. US Geological Survey, Reston, United States of America|

Description

To improve the suitability of the Darwin Core standard for the research and management of alien species, the standard needs to express the native status of organisms, how well established they are and how they came to occupy a location. To facilitate this, we propose:

1. To adopt a controlled vocabulary for the existing Darwin Core term dwc:establishmentMeans

2. To elevate the pathway term from the Invasive Species Pathways extension to become a new Darwin Core term dwc:pathway maintained as part of the Darwin Core standard

3. To adopt a new Darwin Core term dwc:degreeOfEstablishment with an associated controlled vocabulary

These changes to the standard will allow users to clearly state whether an occurrence of a species is native to a location or not, how it got there (pathway), and to what extent the species has become a permanent feature of the location. By improving Darwin Core for capturing and sharing these data, we aim to improve the quality of occurrence and checklist data in general and to increase the number of potential uses of these data.

Files

BISS_article_38084.pdf

Files (941.2 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:a5d3f1b937aca097de0f142c057575be
941.2 kB Preview Download

System files (173.9 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:e686240d464041c2fc41b4d413b2d6b0
173.9 kB Download

Linked records

Additional details