Instagram ground truthing approach – Spatial occurrence data of Nothofagus pumilio in the Southern Andes

Valid and unbiased species occurrence data are scarce, making their availability a challenge for ecological modelling approaches. Remote sensing is a promising approach for increasing the availability of species occurrence data, but it requires ground truthing for validation. Recently, Citizen Science and social media have contributed to improving occurrence data sampling and ground truthing methods.

This dataset contains remote sensing occurrence data of the tree species Nothofagus pumilio, which was validated by ground truthing points created using a novel Instagram ground truthing approach.

Details on the sampling approach can be found in the corresponding publication:

Werner M, Weidinger J, Böhner J, Schickhoff U, Bobrowski M (2024) Instagram data for validating Nothofagus pumilio distribution mapping in the Southern Andes: A novel ground truthing approach. Frontiers of Biogeography 17: e140606. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.17.140606

Spatial occurrence data

• Raster data in tiff format (value: 1 = N. pumilio occurrence, NA (-99999) = absence of N. pumilio)
• WGS84, UTM Zone 18S projection

Instagram ground truthing approach

• Shape data (points) and .xlsx table provided in a zip folder
• “origin”: GTA and GTA2 refer to Instagram ground truthing points that were sampled at different times (GTA in 2021 and GTA2 in 2022). "Additional" points are points that were mainly set in (neighbouring) valleys with autumn-coloured treelines adjacent to ground truthing points.
• “Validation”: 1 = Instagram ground truthing point covers the spatial occurrence of N. pumilio, NA (-99999) = point is not located on the N. pumilio occurrence data
• “Instagram Link”: Link to the Instagram post analysed. Please note: Users can delete their posts or change their privacy settings at any time. Not all posts may be accessible.