Biological survey of lakes and reservoirs from Sardinia and Piedmont (Italy), a georeferenced dataset from the project LIFE INHABIT

Study Extent

The 3549 georeferenced occurrence records at the species level or higher rank have been uploaded to the GBIF platform, for a total of 455 taxa collected during 904 sampling events. The occurrences were recorded during the years from 2006 to 2012.

Sampling

Sampling was performed from 2006-06-22 to 2012-11-07. More specifically for each Quality Element:
• Phytoplankton: sampling from 23 March 2010 to 28 December 2011
• Macrophytes: sampling from 2 August 2010 to 2 August 2011
• Macrobenthos: sampling from 22 June 2006 to 27 September 2011
• Fish fauna: sampling from 14 November 2007 to 7 November 2012
Phytoplankton was sampled from six to three times at maximum depth point. Macrophytes were sampled along transects from the shore to the maximum depth point were macrophytes were still present. Macroinvertebrate were generally sampled during both stratification and circulation mixing of the lakes and reservoirs periods using a grab on soft sediments along transect connecting the shores to the maximum depths. Sampling was carried out in the form of a stratified sampling, working on transects with sampling sites arranged to give equal coverage of the different habitats and different depths. Each sampling site is located along transects connecting the shore-line to the maximum depth, covering three main characteristic lake areas differing in depth (littoral, sublittoral and profundal). Fish fauna was sampled using both standard nets (Pokorny-Site, Czech Republic) and electrofishing.

Quality Control

Quality control for geographic data: coordinates were collected by GPS during sampling and verified on topographic maps.
Quality control for taxonomic data: All records are validated using the taxonomic backbone of GBIF and Algaebase: Listing of World’s Algae.

Method steps

1. The dataset was built based on scientific papers and several technical reports published in the frame of project LIFE INHABIT (Idromorfologia locale, habitat e Piani di Gestione: nuove misure per migliorare la qualità ecologica in fiumi e laghi sud europei LIFE08 ENV/IT/000413). Sampling procedures followed standardized sampling protocols. Data were gathered in a csv following DwC term names (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/).
2. To describe Sampling Event files, dataset fields’ names were chosen according to Darwin Core (Wieczorek et al., 2012) and include several data columns divided into two CSV sheets (Occurrence and Event) for each Bilogical Quality Element that are Fish fauna, Macrobenthos, Macrophytes and Phytoplankton:
   •Occurrence file, data set includes the following 31 column headers (using DwC term name:
   http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/): “eventid”, “eventDate”, “occurrenceID”, “basisOfRecord”, “originalNameUsage”, “scientificName“ “decimalLatitude”, “decimalLongitude”, “verbatimCoordinateSystem”, “geodeticDatum”, “countryCode”, “organismQuantity”, “organismQuantityType”, “occurrenceStatus”, “kingdom”, “Phylum”, “Class”, “Order”, “Family”, “Genus”, “specificEpithet”, “infraspecificEpithet”, “taxonRank”, “taxonomicStatus”, “taxonID”, “references”, “identifiedBy”, “verbatimDepth”, “WaterBody”, “locality”, “country”.
   •Event file, data set includes the following 14 column headers (using DwC term name:
   http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/) “eventide”, “eventDate”, “samplingProtocol”, “sampleSizeValue”, “sampleSizeUnit”, “decimalLatitude”, “decimalLongitude”, “geodeticDatum”, “countryCode”, “country”, “verbatimSRS”, “verbatimLatitude”, “verbatim.Longitude”, “verbatimCoordinateSystem”.
   All records are validated using the taxonomic backbone of GBIF and Algaebase: Listing of World’s Algae

Sites are distributed in two Italian regions: Sardinia (five reservoirs and the only one natural lake of the island) and Piedmont (five lakes and two reservoirs). The following sites are part of the Long-Term Ecological Research (eLTER) Network: Candia (https://deims.org/c7fe4203-24b1-4d11-a573-99b99204fede), Bidighinzu (https://deims.org/67757ba9-c40c-4e2c-bdad-bc26905a738e) and Sos Canales (https://deims.org/e8374da3-1644-460b-bd4c-bf669514dd22). Data are georeferenced according to WGS 84 datum.
Habitat type: Pelagic and littoral areas of lakes and reservoirs.
Biogeographic region: Within the Palearctic realm, according to the definitions of the European Environmental Agency (2017), the dataset covers two European biogeographical regions: Alpine and Mediterranean.
Country: Italy.