A comprehensive database of expert-curated occurrences for the genus Carex L. (Cyperaceae)

María Sanz-Arnal,  Pablo García-Moro,  Carmen Benítez-Benítez,  Marina Coca-de-la-Iglesia,  Angélica Gallego-Narbón,  Consolación Barciela,  Fabrizio Bartolucci,  Prabin Bhandari,  Matthew Bradley,  Asunción Cano,  Antoine Derouaux,  Sabina Donadío,  Marcial Escudero,  Mariela Fabbroni,  Kerry A. Ford,  Gabriele Galasso,  Sebastian Gebauer,  M. Socorro González-Elizondo,  David Hamon,  Matthias H. Hoffmann,  Xiao-Feng Jin,  Jacob Koopman,  Bangze Li,  Raúl Lois,  Yi-Fei Lu,  Modesto Luceño,  José Ignacio Márquez-Corro,  Santiago Martín-Bravo,  Attila Mesterházy,  Mónica Míguez,  Ana Morales-Alonso,  A. Muthama Muasya,  Paulo Muñoz-Schüler,  Robert F. C. Naczi,  Nora Oleas,  Luciana Pereira-Silva,  Radomír Řepka,  Anton A. Reznicek,  Katie K. Sanbonmatsu,  Enmily Sánchez,  Daniel Spalink,  Arne Strid,  Pieter Vanormelingen,  Filip Verloove,  Karen L. Wilson,  Okihito Yano,  Shuren Zhang,  Pedro Jiménez-Mejías

Motivation
Geographic occurrences are essential for biodiversity studies, but publicly available repositories like GBIF often contain errors and biases, especially for taxonomically complex groups like Carex L. (Cyperaceae). This work provides an expert-curated global dataset of occurrences compiled from different sources to enhance data accuracy and usability. The final dataset includes 384,067 occurrences of 1790 Carex species.

Main Types of Variables Contained
The dataset includes species occurrence records with geographic coordinates, taxonomic identifications, and curation flags (e.g., introduced, erroneous records).

Spatial Location and Grain
The dataset covers a global scale, using the WGS84 projection. Spatial resolution is standardised to a minimum of three decimal degrees (~1 km, if possible).

Time Period and Grain
Online records span from 1950 to 2020, but some manually georeferenced records are earlier (1850). There is also fieldwork data after 2020, specifically up to 2023.

Major Taxa and Level of Measurement
Cyperaceae: Carex. Most records have species-level identification, and some of them are identified at subspecies or variety levels.

Software Format
Data are supplied as comma-separated values files with UTF-8 encoding.

Global Ecology and Biogeography

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