Waarnemingen.be – Non-native plant and animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium

Citizen scientists make important contributions to the collection of occurrence data of non-native species. We present two datasets comprising more than 520,000 records of 1,771 non-native species from Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region in Belgium, Western Europe, collected through the website http://www.waamemingen.be hosted by Stichting Natuurinformatie and managed by the nature conservation NGO Natuurpunt. Most records were collected by citizen scientists, mainly since 2008. Waarnemingen.be aims at recording all species, native and non-native, and it is shown here that this kind of biodiversity portals are also particularly well suited to collect large amounts of data on non-native species. Both datasets presented here are also discoverable through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).