Data Paper |
Corresponding author: Laurens B. Sparrius ( sparrius@floron.nl ) Academic editor: Ricarda Riina
© 2019 Laurens B. Sparrius, Joop van Heeswijk, Gerard M. Dirkse, Michiel J. J. M. Verhofstad.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Sparrius LB, van Heeswijk J, Dirkse GM, Verhofstad MJJM (2019) The FLORIVON flora survey in the Netherlands between 1902 and 1950. PhytoKeys 135: 11-20. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.135.30069
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In 1902, the nationwide citizen science project, known as FLORIVON, for mapping the flora of the Netherlands was launched, resulting in the publication of a complete flora atlas in 1980. Until 2004, the atlas dataset of the fieldwork between 1902 and 1950 had only been partly digitised and observations were aggregated and anonymised. Between 2001 and 2018, the dataset has been entirely digitised from the original field forms, including notes on non-native taxa. This paper presents key characteristics and figures of the dataset and provides an overview of the historical survey project, the digitisation process and subsequent validation of the data. The dataset is currently curated in the National Database Flora and Fauna and published in GBIF.
Biodiversity, citizen science, digitization, mapping, taxonomy, vascular plants
In March 1902, the National Herbarium of the Netherlands (L) and the Dutch Botanical Society started a citizen science project – nowadays referred to as FLORIVON – to map the flora of the entire country of the Netherlands, led by J.W.C. Goethart and W.J. Jongmans (
Starting from the autumn of 1902 until 1907, small numbers of distribution maps were published on an irregular basis to show participants the progress of the work. From 1908 to 1923, only a few participants continued their work, mainly during the so-called Unio summer meetings of the Dutch Botanical Society (
In 1930, the IVON foundation (Institute for Vegetation Research in the Netherlands) was founded by J.W.C. Goethart and aimed to unite all botanists working on plant surveys. Between 1930 and 1939, many grid cells were surveyed and preliminary maps were compiled and published in several journals (e.g.
It was only in 1980 that the data were compiled into an atlas of the flora of the Netherlands with maps on 5 × 5 km spatial resolution. The atlas was produced by J. Mennema and co-workers at the National Herbarium in Leiden (
In 1988, FLORON was founded as a spin-off from the National Herbarium to continue the vascular plant surveys by volunteers and build a database by digitising distribution data of vascular plants. At first, the Atlas of the Flora of the Netherlands (published in 1980) was digitised to have quick access to historical distribution maps. Between 2001 and 2018, all original field forms, opportunistic observations on handwritten notes, letters, vegetation relevées and literature data were digitised by Joop van Heeswijk and compiled into the FLORIVON dataset which is described in this paper.
The basis of the survey scheme was a map of grid cells 1.3 × 1.01 km covering the Netherlands. Grid cells were assigned to participants by the project organisation. Each grid cell was then surveyed for several hours to one day aiming to make a complete list of all wild vascular plants occurring in the area. Survey data were recorded on field forms with abbreviations of scientific taxon names printed on them (Fig.
Samples of the FLORIVON survey forms: A field form showing a square with a drawing of the surveyed area, space for writing down grid square code (‘hokje’), location name, observer name(s) and date, followed by two pages of taxon abbreviations that surveyors had to cross out after observation B written note with header data containing the grid cell code (e.g. L6.12.31), observer’s name and the survey date. Stamps confirm that the data have been included in printed atlas volumes.
Top four observers per decade in the main survey period of FLORIVON with the number of surveys performed in brackets. In total, 572 people were mentioned as observers in the dataset.
1900–1909 | 1910–1919 | 1920–1929 | 1930–1939 | 1940–1949 |
---|---|---|---|---|
L. Vuyck (2369) | L. Vuyck (1477) | A. Koopmans (867) | J. Sloff (6722) | J.L. van Soest (768) |
J.W.C. Goethart (1293) | A.W. Kloos (577) | D. Koopmans-Forstmann (634) | J.L. van Soest (3448) | J. Sloff (715) |
W.J. Jongmans (1123) | J. Sloff (407) | J.L. van Soest (254) | T. Weevers (2187) | G. Sissingh (417) |
M.J. Blijdenstein (998) | D. Lako (284) | A.W. Kloos (189) | Joh. Jansen (1756) | V. Westhoff (364) |
Survey forms were digitised using Turboveg (
Taxon names were mapped to current names using a translation table between the Prodromus Flora Batavae (
Records without an observation date were assigned to the entire survey period of 1902–1950. Records without a valid taxon name or missing grid cell codes were omitted from the final dataset. Records with locations entirely outside the country or in the sea were also omitted. A total of 5,530 records were cleaned. The number of digitised observations after this first data cleaning step was 2,638,919.
Validation of the digitised observations was performed with an automated procedure which involved trying to find a match for each observation in a dataset, based on printed volumes of the Atlas of the Flora of the Netherlands (
In the FLORIVON dataset, 142,838 observations did not match validated data sources and were considered for a manual review. Of the remaining unmatched observations, 110,889 records of common taxa were validated, i.e. taxa occurring in 30% or more of the 5 × 5 km grid squares in the Netherlands. A total of 2,415 records of less common taxa were validated if they were present in neighbouring grid cells. Further unmatched records, rare taxa, were validated by Gerard Dirkse by plotting them on a map for visual interpretation (17,427 observations). These observations were validated if they matched the geographical pattern of all other valid observations of the taxon. Herbarium specimens and publications mentioning an observation were also taken into account during validation. In the validation process, 12,107 out of 142,838 records were deleted (ca. 3%).
The validated dataset was added to the NDFF Verspreidingsatlas (http://www.verspreidingsatlas.nl), which is the platform FLORON uses to curate datasets. Simultaneously, the dataset was published through the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT).
Joop van Heeswijk performed the digitisation between 2001 and 2018 as voluntary work. Laurens Sparrius performed the validation of the dataset. Gerard Dirkse assisted with the validation of non-native and doubtful taxa. Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Leiden) is hosting the physical archive with field forms and notes.
The dataset is curated on the NDFF Verspreidingsatlas data platform and will be updated on GBIF annually if any changes are made. Included Darwin Core terms are: occurrenceID, type, language, licenserightsHolder, accessRights, references, datasetName, basisOfRecord, eventDate, decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, geodeticDatum, coordinateUncertaintyInMeters, scientificName, kingdom, taxonRank, scientificNameAuthorship.
Excluded information: Complete observer biographies, source type (field list, publication, specimen, vegetation relevée), location names and remarks were not included in the published dataset, but can be found in the source (curation) database, which can be accessed with the link below. This information was excluded due to privacy reasons or because it was deemed irrelevant.
Object name: FLORIVON
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Character encoding: UTF-8
Language: English
Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode
First publication date: 2019/09/01
Distribution: http://www.verspreidingsatlas.nl:8080/ipt
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15468/ke2ody
Curation website: https://www.verspreidingsatlas.nl/waarnemingen
Number of records: 2,626,773
The dataset only includes taxa of vascular plants (Kingdom Plantae: clade Tracheophyta). Most of the taxa are native to the Netherlands. Occasionally, non-native taxa were recorded. Nomenclature follows the last edition of the Flora of the Netherlands (
The dataset contains distribution data of 2502 taxa at species or intraspecific level divided over 138 plant families. The plant families with the most observations in the dataset belong to the Asteraceae and Poaceae (Table
Some taxa in FLORIVON are currently accepted as lumped taxa, which makes it impossible to compare taxon distributions for certain taxa (Table
Plant family | Number and percentage of observations |
---|---|
Asteraceae | 326856 (12.4%) |
Poaceae | 292948 (11.1%) |
Fabaceae | 142223 (5.4%) |
Rosaceae | 124470 (4.7%) |
Caryophyllaceae | 108542 (4.1%) |
Lamiaceae | 108048 (4.1%) |
Apiaceae | 103661 (3.9%) |
Plantaginaceae | 100695 (3.8%) |
Brassicaceae | 91438 (3.4%) |
Polygonaceae | 75203 (2.8%) |
Cyperaceae | 71567 (2.7%) |
Ranunculaceae | 63497 (2.4%) |
Juncaceae | 50209 (1.9%) |
Primulaceae | 42433 (1.6%) |
Amaranthaceae | 33551 (1.2%) |
Boraginaceae | 33050 (1.2%) |
Rubiaceae | 32086 (1.2%) |
Salicaceae | 30801 (1.1%) |
Ericaceae | 29673 (1.1%) |
Caprifoliaceae | 28348 (1%) |
Betulaceae | 26600 (1%) |
Violaceae | 24663 (0.9%) |
Onagraceae | 23652 (0.9%) |
Urticaceae | 22418 (0.8%) |
Orchidaceae | 21735 (0.8%) |
Taxa in the Prodromus Florae Batavae and FLORIVON that are now considered lumped taxa.
Scientific names of combined taxa | Number of observations |
---|---|
Myosotis laxa subsp. cespitosa / scorpioides | 14792 |
Festuca rubra / arenaria | 14738 |
Agrostis stolonifera / gigantea | 8930 |
Betula pendula / pubescens | 7961 |
Juncus bufonius / ambiguus | 6991 |
Ranunculus aquatilis / peltatus | 5881 |
Arenaria leptoclados / serpyllifolia | 5660 |
Polypodium vulgare / interjectum | 5283 |
Dryopteris carthusiana / dilatata | 4700 |
Bolboschoenus maritimus / laticarpus | 3979 |
Thymus pulegioides / serpyllum | 3326 |
Atriplex prostrata / longipes | 2781 |
Nasturtium microphyllum / officinale | 2279 |
Aphanes arvensis / australis | 1955 |
Potamogeton pusillus / berchtoldii | 1649 |
Agrostis canina / vinealis | 1496 |
Scrophularia auriculata / umbrosa | 1375 |
Salicornia europaea / procumbens | 1333 |
Veronica anagallis-aquatica / catenata | 1319 |
Viola reichenbachiana / riviniana | 1296 |
Malva neglecta / pusilla | 1263 |
Elytrigia atherica / maritima | 785 |
Festuca brevipila / lemanii | 428 |
Ranunculus aquatilis / baudotii | 418 |
Glyceria notata / declinata | 226 |
Aster lanceolatus / ontarionis | 188 |
Galeopsis ladanum / angustifolia | 121 |
Trifolium campestre / dubium | 103 |
Cerastium pumilum / glutinosum | 35 |
The dataset covers the entire country of the Netherlands as it was in the period 1902–1950. At that time, the southern part of the province of Flevoland did not yet exist (
Survey data were collected in small grid cells of 1.3 × 1.01 km (kwartierhok) (Fig.
The periods before and after 1925 show different patterns of survey intensity, which should be taken into account when using the data for further analysis (Fig.
The authors thank Berry van den Hoorn and Wout Holverda for providing office space and assistance at Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Eddy Weeda for his opinion on Thymus and Scrophularia taxonomy. Baudewijn Odé, Jan van Groenendael, Kees Groen, Wil Tamis and Ruud van der Meijden (†) for starting the project. Funding was obtained from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds for the years 2001–2004 and Radboud University for the year 2011. The Dutch node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (NLBIF) funded the last five years (2014–2018) of the digitisation project.