The availability of biodiversity databases is expanding at unprecedented rates. Nevertheless, species occurrence data can be intrinsically biased and contain uncertainties that impact the accuracy and reliability of biodiversity estimates. In this study, we developed a reproducible framework to assess three dimensions of bias—taxonomic, spatial, and temporal—as well as temporal uncertainty associated with data collections. We utilized the vegetation plot data located in Europe, from sPlotOpen, an open-access database, as a case study. The metrics proposed for estimating bias include completeness of the species richness for taxonomic bias, Nearest Neighbor Index for spatial bias, and Pielou’s index for temporal bias. Additionally, we introduced a new method based on a negative exponential curve to model the temporal decay in biodiversity data, aiming to quantify temporal uncertainty. Finally, we assessed the sampling bias considering the influence of various spatial variables (i.e, road density, human population count, Natura 2000 network and topographic roughness). We discovered that the facets of bias and the temporal uncertainty varied throughout Europe, as did the different roles played by spatial variables in determining biases. sPlotOpen showed a clustered distribution of the vegetation plots, and an uneven distribution in sampling completeness, year of sampling and temporal uncertainty. The facets of bias were significantly explained mainly by the presence of Natura 2000 network and marginally by the human population count. These results suggest that employing an efficient procedure to examine biases and uncertainties in data collections can enhance data quality and provide more reliable biodiversity estimates.

Elisa Marchetto

Martina Livornese

Francesco Maria Sabatini

Enrico Tordoni

Daniele Da Re

Jonathan Lenoir

Riccardo Testolin

Giovanni Bacaro

Roberto Cazzolla Gatti

Alessandro Chiarucci

Giles M. Foody

Lukáš Gábor

Quentin Groom

Jacopo Iaria

Marco Malavasi

V´ıtˇezslav Moudr´y

Diletta Santovito

Petra Šímová

Piero Zannini

Duccio Rocchini

Biodiversity Informatics

Biodiversity informatics

Addressing multiple facets of bias and uncertainty in continental scale biodiversity databases

解决大陆尺度生物多样性数据库中的多方面偏差和不确定性

Addressing multiple facets of bias and uncertainty in continental scale biodiversity databases

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