ReSurveyEurope
ReSurveyEurope is an initiative within the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) that aims at mobilizing vegetation-plot data with repeated measurements over time, including both data from permanent plots and resurveys of vegetation survey plots. It aims at international collaboration towards a nuanced and robust assessment of the temporal trends in plant diversity in Europe.
Such a collaborative initiative depends on the willingness of many actors to work together, therefore transparent governance and decision-making structures are essential. ReSurveyEurope thus takes an inclusive approach to open collaboration and co-authorship policy, building on the experience and approach of EVA. This means that (i) data owners/contributors have control over the use of their data in any specific analysis (allowing them to opt-in for the resulting papers according to certain criteria such as the number of plots used in the analysis) and that (ii) colleagues not directly involved in ReSurveyEurope can submit proposals for analyses that are subject to approval. The principles of collaboration, governance and decision-making are described in the ReSurveyEurope Data Property and Governance Rules.
ReSurveyEurope Board
- Helge Bruelheide, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany, helge.bruelheide@botanik.uni-halle.de
- Milan Chytrý, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, chytry@sci.muni.cz
- Stefan Dullinger, University of Vienna, Austria, stefan.dullinger@univie.ac.at
- Franz Essl, University of Vienna, Austria, franz.essl@univie.ac.at
- Ilona Knollová, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, ikuzel@sci.muni.cz
- Elected members of the EVA Coordinating Board.
Contact for data management issues
- Ilona Knollová, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, ikuzel@sci.muni.cz
Data for ReSurveyEurope
ReSurveyEurope includes fine-grained biodiversity data of vascular plants, bryophytes or lichens (e.g. relevés, plots, transects) from Europe, including species occurrence (and ideally also abundance) in at least two repeated surveys in different years conducted using identical or at least similar and comparable methods. Data may be from any vegetated habitat, including terrestrial and aquatic.
- Data sets should contain as a minimum requirement:
- a complete list of vascular plants, preferably with information on abundance or abundance proxies such as cover or biomass
- plot coordinates (latitude and longitude) and information on the precision of their measurement
- sampling date (ideally the exact date, or at least the year)
- plot size
In addition, information on the data collection methods, vegetation cover, elevation, slope, aspect, bedrock, soil, land use, recent land-use changes and vegetation or habitat type is useful.
Data provision format
The data should ideally be provided as Turboveg 2 databases, in which standard header-data fields of ReSurveyEurope are added and filled in. Using Turboveg v. 2.148 or higher versions, a database structure with these fields can be downloaded from https://www.synbiosys.alterra.nl/turboveg/ under Database dictionaries / ReSurvey.
If the resurveyed plots are included in an existing EVA database, they should be specified in the ReSurvey header data fields, and an updated version of the database should be sent to EVA via Ilona Knollová.
Any resurveyed plots not stored in the EVA database can be either stored in an existing EVA database or sent separately to Ilona Knollová. In the latter case, they will be stored as a new dataset in ReSurveyEurope. Datasets of records from many resurveyed plots (several hundreds or thousands) can also be registered as a new database in the core part of EVA. In such a case, this database should first be registered in the Global Index of Vegetation-plot Databases (GIVD; https://www.givd.info).
If the data are not in Turboveg format or the data owner does not use this program, the data can be sent to Ilona Knollová in any format. We will then convert them into Turboveg format.
Metadata
Each resurvey dataset should come with a brief metadata sheet. If a database contains data from multiple resurvey projects, each should be accompanied by a metadata sheet. Please use the downloadable metadata sheet found at http://euroveg.org/download/ReSurveyEurope-Project-Metadata-Form.docx
ReSurveyEurope databases, projects, and publications
- ReSurveyEurope databases with their basic descriptors are listed here.
- ReSurveyEurope projects with their description in Data Request Forms are listed here, along with the core EVA projects. They are identified by “ReSurveyEurope” after the project number.
- ReSurveyEurope publications are listed here, along with publications based on core EVA data.
Collaborations
- forestREplot – a database of forest herb layer resurvey plots; forestREplot and ReSurveyEurope share European data if data owners agree
- GLORIA – Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments; GLORIA provides European datasets to ReSurveyEurope
- LOTVS – Long-term Vegetation Sampling database; LOTVS and ReSurveyEurope share European data if data owners agree
- Nutrient Status Initiative– ReSurvey Europe and the Nutrient Status Initiative have issued a joint data call
- sPlot – Global Vegetation Database; sPlot, starting with version 4.0, is collecting time-series data outside Europe and is seeking consent from ReSurveyEurope contributors to combine European data with datasets from other continents for global analyses according to sPlot rules.