Belgian baseline distribution of invasive alien species of Union concern (Regulation (EU) 1143/2014)

Aims and scope The European Alien Species Information Network team (EASIN, http://easin.jrc.ec.europa.eu) of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) requests the European member states to provide and verify the baseline distribution data of invasive alien species of Union Concern (Tsiamis et al. 2017) as provided by the EASIN mapping system (Katsanevakis et al. 2012). These are species with documented biodiversity impacts sensu the European Union Regulation on the prevention and management of the introduction and spread of Invasive Alien Species in Europe (IAS Regulation No 1143/2014) (European Union 2014). The purpose of this baseline is to set a representative geographic account of the distribution of these species at (i) country and (ii) 10km2 grid level before the entry into force of the Regulation (and the listing of species through implementing regulations). This distribution provides the baseline for subsequent reporting by the member states as required by the IAS Regulation. The dataset provides a shapefile on the baseline distribution of the invasive species of EU concern in Belgium based on an aggregated dataset (ias_belgium_t0_xxxx). Data were compiled from various datasets holding invasive species observations such as data from research institutes and research projects (76%), citizen science observatories (23%) and a range of other sources (1%) such as governmental agencies, water managers, invasive species control companies, angling and hunting organizations etc. Data were normalized using a custom mapping of the original data files to Darwin Core (Wieczorek et al. 2012) where possible. Species names were mapped to the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy (GBIF 2016) using the species API (http://www.gbif.org/developer/species). Appropriate selection of records was performed based on predefined cut-off dates (see data range) and record content validation (see validation procedure). Data were then joined with GRID10k layer Belgium based on GRID10k cellcodes (ETRS_1989_LAEA). File description The dataset contains two types of data: Shapefiles (ias_belgium_t0_2016.zip, ias_belgium_t0_2018.zip, ias_belgium_t0_2020.zip and ias_belgium_t0_2023.zip) providing the presence of the species of EU concern at 10km2 (European Terrestrial Reference System projection - 1989 ETRS_1989_LAEA) level (resp. for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th batch of species added to the Union List). The attributes table field “ACCEPTED” provides coded information on the distribution validation: correct squares