Invasive Organisms Information: A proposed TDWG Task Group

Invasive species are a global problem for conservation, economics and health. Information on their distribution, spread and impact are essential to inform national and international policy on biodiversity. Furthermore, demand for these data are only likely to increase as recent environmental change results in the widespread reconfiguring of species distributions. Researchers and managers of invasive species require certain elements of data from observations and inventories of species, such as, how the organism was brought to the location, how well established it is and whether it is considered alien to that location. However, Darwin Core either lacks terms sufficient for these purposes or does not have a suitable controlled vocabulary on existing terms to express these concepts clearly and to harmonize data collection. We are proposing a TDWG task group to make recommendations to improve Darwin Core for invasive species research and management. Some of the specific terms we will look are dwc:establishmentMeans and dwc:occurrenceStatus. However, we may also recommend new terms and controlled vocabularies, including how to express the degree of establishment of an organism at a location. We will look at current frameworks for alien species data and analyse how these are used both by invasive species specialists and by the broader community collecting biodiversity observations. We will aim to make a proposal that is sufficiently flexible to be of use to the whole community, while providing sufficient resolution to be of use to specialists in invasion biology.