GIASIP GBIF

This dataset is an integrated view of reported national-level occurrence and of recorded introduction pathways for invasive alien species (IAS). It combines data on these aspects from datasets shared by partner organisations in the Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership (GIASIP, http://giasipartnership.myspecies.info/). The contributing datasets, as of April 2016, are supplied by CAB International (Invasive Species Compendium, ISC, www.cabi.org/isc) and the IUCN Species Survival Commission Invasive Species Specialist Group (Global Invasive Species Database, GISD, http://www.iucngisd.org/gisd/).

These datasets have been published under Creative Commons licences to promote wide usage, and have been formatted using standard data structures for IAS distribution (http://rs.gbif.org/sandbox/extension/issg-distribution.xml) and IAS pathways (http://rs.gbif.org/sandbox/extension/issg-pathway.xml).

The data have been processed and integrated by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, http://www.gbif.org/) to create the current integrated dataset. The integration process has included the following steps: - Standardisation of taxonomy for all data, using GBIF taxonomic data services, and linking of all records with GBIF species records - Merging of distribution data from all contributing datasets into a single table with links back to original source datasets - Merging of pathway data from all contributing datasets into a single table with links back to original source datasets - Addition of national distribution records for all included species based on recorded occurrence in GBIF data since 1970

Since these data are standardised for species, country (ISO country code), establishment means/status (http://rs.gbif.org/sandbox/vocabulary/issg/status.xml), invasiveness (http://rs.gbif.org/sandbox/vocabulary/issg/invasiveness.xml) and introduction pathway (http://rs.gbif.org/sandbox/vocabulary/issg/pathway.xml), they offer an efficient way for researchers to gain rapid access to a broadly-based set of evidence for distribution and pathways for IAS.

The current version of this dataset is offered for evaluation and test. It should particularly be noted that the assignment of pathway identifiers for CABI ISC records is a preliminary mapping from CABI terminology and awaits the formal adoption by CABI of the ISSG pathway vocabulary. Errors in interpretation of this field within the current dataset are the responsibility of GBIF rather than CABI.

The Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership welcomes contributions of complementary data following the same structure from other groups working with IAS. Please contact helpdesk@gbif.org for further information.