The Optional Advanced Settings allow you to fine‑tune your alerts, so you only receive notifications that are relevant and useful to you.
When you first set up your alerts, we recommend leaving these settings at their default values and adjusting them only after you’ve received your first few notifications.
When to stop alerting me
Unless you’ve chosen new or uncommon weeds as your alert type, you’ll receive notifications for all species included in your alert, regardless of how many records currently exist or how old they are.
You can refine this by limiting the number and / or the age of weed records to be included in your alerts:
- Limit by number of records. The stop alerting me after n records setting restricts alerts to your chosen taxa (species, genus, etc) with fewer than the number of records you specify. Note that this applies individually to each taxa and does not include any records of lower order taxa (e.g. sub-species) in the count.
- Limit by age of records. It’s common for older weed records to be added to GBIF—for example, when historical specimens are digitised or newly identified. The only records from the last n years setting filters out older records so you only receive alerts for more recent detections.
Note that these two settings work in combination. As records age, they will eventually fall outside the time window you set, reducing the total count for each species and affecting whether it meets your record‑limit threshold.
If you’ve chosen new or uncommon weeds as your alert type, you can change the default settings for the maximum number and age of weed records here.
Maximum location uncertainty
Each weed record may have a location uncertainty value which defines how accurate the location of the record is. The uncertainty may be introduced by the limitations of the recording device (e.g. GPS accuracy), set by the person recording the weed or deliberately introduced by the publisher to obscure the location. Users can decide what level of location uncertainty is acceptable for their purposes and filter records accordingly.
The location uncertainty area is shown as a circle centred on the weed record location, with a radius equal to the location uncertainty value attached to the record. If the record does not include a location uncertainty value, it is displayed as a point at the recorded location.
You’ll receive an alert for any weed record whose location, including its uncertainty radius, overlaps with your selected area (and its buffer zone, if you’ve added one). For example, a weed record outside your location and buffer may still trigger an alert if its uncertainty radius extends into the buffer zone. Here’s an example:
The default setting for maximum location uncertainty is 25 m. You can adjust all default values in the Advanced settings section of the alert form.
Exclude species
You may want to exclude certain species from your alert in cases such as:
- you've selected a whole genus for your alert, but don't want notifications about particular species within that genus. For example, you want notifications for all species in the genus Asparagus, except for Asparagus scandens because it's already widespread in your area of interest. Note that the same applies to higher‑level taxa — for example, you can create an alert for an entire family but exclude a particular genus.
- you've selected a category, such as a Regional Pest Management Plan (RPMP), but want to ignore particular species in that category. For example, your selected RPMP includes gorse, but you don't want to receive alerts about new gorse records.
To exclude a species, start typing a few characters of the common name or scientific name. Click on the "+ Exclude" button next to the species you want to exclude from your alert.
Be aware that some data sources include very large uncertainty values. For instance, iNaturalist records with obscured locations are assigned a location uncertainty of around 28 km. Some historical records have uncertainties of 2,000 km, and a small number exceed 15,000 km.
After fine‑tuning your advanced settings, you can then review your alert.