Sampling event

Alien plant presence dataset from the point-radius plot surveys in 2010-2015 in Taiwan

Latest version published by Taiwan Forestry Research Institute on 23 May 2020 Taiwan Forestry Research Institute
Publication date:
23 May 2020
License:
CC0 1.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 4,879 records in English (1 MB) - Update frequency: as needed
Metadata as an EML file download in English (16 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (16 KB)

Description

This dataset included 63,085 occurrence records of alien vascular plants from the field surveys of 4,879 sampling plots being conducted in 2010-2015 in Taiwan. We made sample plots with radius in 20 meters along the road systems covering Taiwan and documented the presence of all plants in the plots. The distance between two adjacent sampling points was about 2.0-2.5 kilometers. We georeferenced the center of each sampling plot by using a GPS receiver and documented the coordinate in decimal degrees of latitude and longitude with accuracy to 0.00001 as well as the altitude with accuracy to 1 meter. We documented the coordinates only when GPS signal was fixed and the error of horizontal positioning was within 5 meters. The altitude of sampling point ranged from -17 to 3,155 meters. There were 72 families with 400 species, 18 subspecies, and 9 varieties of alien plants being documented in this dataset.

Data Records

The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 4,879 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

Event (core)
4879
Occurrence 
63085
MeasurementOrFacts 
9758

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Chou FS, Lin CC, Lu SS, Liao CK, Wang YH (2016) Alien plant presence dataset from the point-radius plot surveys in 2010-2015 in Taiwan. Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Taiwan

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. 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.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: e1f3be55-9f45-474c-8374-502b236e0ad0.  Taiwan Forestry Research Institute publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility.

Keywords

Sampling event; alien plants; presence; point-radius plots

Contacts

Chun-Kuei Liao
  • Originator
Contracted assistant researcher
Taiwan Forestry Research Institute
Kaohsiung
TW
Chau-Chin Lin
  • Point Of Contact
Research Scientist
Taiwan Forestry Research Institute
Taipei
TW
Yu-Huang Wang
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
Node manager
Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility
Taipei
886-2-27872221
Fu-Shan Chou
  • Point Of Contact
Research Scientist
Taiwan Forestry Research Institute
Kaohsiung
TW
Sheng-Shan Lu
  • Point Of Contact
Research Scientist
Taiwan Forestry Research Institute
Taipei
TW

Geographic Coverage

Taiwan

Bounding Coordinates South West [21.896, 120.037], North East [25.291, 122.002]

Taxonomic Coverage

Vascular plants (Magnoliophyta, Pteridophyta)

Phylum Magnoliophyta (angiosperms), Pteridophyta (cryptogams)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 2010-02-11 / 2015-07-23

Project Data

For monitoring the current distributions and modelling the potential expansion of alien plants in Taiwan, we conducted this six-year (2010-2015) project to collect the presence data of alien plants along the road network in Taiwan. This dataset was used as an example dataset for the BIFA project “Biodiversity informatics cookbook” to demonstrate how to compile and publish a sampling event dataset.

Title Modelling the potential geographical distributions of naturalized plants in Taiwan
Identifier BIFA1_1
Funding Council of Agriculture, Taiwan
Study Area Description The study area covered whole Taiwan island.
Design Description Because the alien plants are easily dispersed along roads and occupy the highly disturbed habitats created by human activities, thus, we made 4,879 sample plots with radius in 20 meters along the road systems covering Taiwan and recorded the presence of all plants in the plots. The distance between two adjacent sampling points was about 2.0-2.5 kilometers.

The personnel involved in the project:

Chun-Kuei Liao
  • Originator
Yu-Huang Wang
  • Metadata Provider
Sheng-Shan Lu
  • Principal Investigator
Chau-Chin Lin
  • Principal Investigator
Fu-Shan Chou
  • Principal Investigator

Sampling Methods

We made sample plots with radius in 20 meters along road network covered Taiwan and documented the presence of alien plants in each plot.

Study Extent The study area covered whole Taiwan island.
Quality Control 1) Geo-referencing sampling points: We georeferenced the center of each sampling plot by using a Garmin 60CX GPS receiver and documented the coordinate in decimal degrees of latitude and longitude with accuracy to 0.00001 as well as the altitude with accuracy to 1 meter. We documented the coordinates only when GPS signal was fixed and the error of horizontal positioning was within 5 meters. 2) Cleaning scientific names: The scientific names of all plants in the dataset were matched and corrected based on the taxonomic data from the GBIF backbone taxonomy and the Catalog of Life by using the scientific name matching service developed by Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility (http://match.taibif.tw/). We adopted the accepted name as well as retrieved the name of higher taxonomic rank and the taxon rank identified for each input name. 3) Standardizing data structure: We adopted the terms from the vocabularies of Darwin Core Sampling-event and the extensions of MeasureOrFacts and Occurrence Core to transform the original data structure fitted into Darwin Core star-schema for better integration into GBIF global data repository.

Method step description:

  1. Field sampling: Sampling points were selected along road network covering Taiwan. Distance between two adjacent points along a road was within 2.0-2.5 kilometers. Sampling points were georeferenced by using a Garmin 60CX GPS receiver.
  2. Compiling the field records: We used Microsoft Excel to create a workbook file with two worksheets to input the data of sampling plots and the presence of plants in each plot. The plot worksheet included the fields of sampling date, plot identifier, habitat, latitude, longitude, altitude, and county to document the detailed information of each plot. The presence worksheet included fields of sampling date, plot identifier, plant identifier, scientific names, and vernacular names in Chinese to document the presence information of plants in each plot.
  3. Cleaning scientific names and retrieve relevant taxonomic information: For correcting any error in spelling scientific names, adopting accepted or valid scientific names, and getting complete information on the hierarchy of taxon ranks, we check all input names against the GBIF backbone taxonomy embedded in the name matching service (http://match.taibif.tw/) developed by Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility in a first batch and save the matching results in a CSV text file. Then, we used Notepad++, a free text editor to open this file. All matching results were copied into the occurrence worksheet aligned with the input names to check the quality of input names by using the score field from the matching results as a filter. Some names could not be found in GBIF backbone taxonomy (scored as N/A) then we matched these names against the taxonomic data from Catalog of Life embedded the TaiBIF name matching service as a send batch in the same way to check the quality and to correct the errors in these names. Finally, we got a cleaned and accepted scientific names with complete name information on the hierarchy of taxonomic ranks for each occurrence record.
  4. Standardizing data structure: For better preservation of complete information of the dataset and better integration into the GBIF global data portal, we adopted the Darwin Core star-schema and transformed our original two data tables (plot and occurrence of plant in plot) into three tables (Event, MeasurementOrFacts, and Occurrence) by using the Darwin Core terms defined for describing sampling events, measurements conducted in the sampling events and the occurrence records from each sampling event. All three data files were saved as UTF-8 chracter encoded CSV file. Users can open these files by any free text editor, such Notepad ++ or PSPad then select and copy the content into a spreadsheet software, such as the Clibre Office Calc or Microsoft Office Excel, for further editing and reuse.

Additional Metadata

Purpose The dataset from this intensive survey was a snapshot of the distribution of alien plants in recent six years (2010-2015) in Taiwan. It could be used to model the potential distributions of these alien plants under the scenarios of climate and land use changes in the future. When the historical occurrence records of alien plants in Taiwan are available, it is also possible to combine the historical records with this dataset to estimate the expansion of the alien plants and to evaluate their invasiveness. This dataset also provided the vernacular name in Chinese for each alien plant. It may facilitate the compilation of checklist of alien plants with vernacular names in different local languages for regional and global usages.
Maintenance Description The metadata or associated data files will be updated as necessary.
Alternative Identifiers e1f3be55-9f45-474c-8374-502b236e0ad0
http://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=tw_tfri_alien_plant_survey