[Tdwg-obs] Public working draft of NatureServe Species Occurrence Schema, comments invited

[tdwg at achapman.org]

Lynn

I have only had a chance to have a quick look through your Schema, but at first glance it looks good.

One comment.  In your definitions of longitude and latitude you use them to refer to the "centrum of the Species Occurrence".  Is centrum the correct word here? Are you really refering to the Geometric Center, the Geographic Center or something else?  I have found very few references to its use in this context (why not use center if you want a fairly neutral term?)

Secondly in 'Calculated Representational Accuray' and 'Estimated Representational Accuracy'  you mention "(versus area added for locational uncertainty)" but I find no mention of locational uncertainty elswhere in the document.  I also query whether the term 'Accuracy' is correctly used here.  From the definitions, I don't see that they refer to Accuracy - but maybe I am reading your definitions wrongly. Perhaps you need to revisit the naming of these fields.

In "County Nation Code"  Do you mean "Country Nation Field"?  and in definition


Cheers

Arthur D. Chapman
Toowoomba, Australia

>>>From Lynn Kutner <Lynn_Kutner at natureserve.org> on 10 Feb 2006:

> Please note that the NatureServe species occurrence data is typically at
> a coarser scale than observation or collection data:
>  
> A Species Occurrence (SO) is an area of land and/or water in which a
> species is, or was, present. A SO should have practical conservation
> value for the species as evidenced by potential continued (or
> historical) presence and/or regular recurrence at a given location. For
> species Elements, the SO often corresponds with the local population,
> but when appropriate may be a portion of a population (e.g., long
> distance dispersers) or a group of nearby populations (e.g.,
> metapopulation). A SO record has both spatial and tabular components
> including a mappable feature and its supporting database attributes.
>  
> Thank you for your time. Instructions for providing comments can be
> found at the bottom of this email.
>  
> Lynn
>  
> Lynn Kutner 
> NatureServe 
> Email:    lynn_kutner at natureserve.org 
> Phone:   (303) 541-0360 
> www.natureserve.org 
> 
>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Douglas Sellers 
> Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 11:39 AM
> Cc: Bruce Stein; Lori Scott; Leslie Honey
> Subject: Public working draft of NatureServe Species Occurrence Schema,
> comments invited
> 
> 
> 
> NatureServe is pleased to announce the release of a public working draft
> (version 0.3) of an XML schema to describe species occurrence-level data
> as reflected in NatureServe's biodiversity data model.  We are seeking
> public review and comments on this version until March 3, 2006.
> Comments received during the review period will be addressed in the next
> release, version 1.0.  
> 
>  
> 
> NatureServe is evolving its data delivery strategy to use XML-based, Web
> services protocols.  Last month the NatureServe Species Schema,
> describing species profile-type information managed by NatureServe, and
> familiar to many through our NatureServe Explorer website
> (www.natureserve.org/explorer), was released for public review.  The
> Species Occurrence Schema that is the subject of this announcement is
> complementary to that schema, and focuses on describing spatially
> explicit species locality data as managed by the NatureServe network.
> The data represented by this schema provides a new level of spatial
> precision not currently available on NatureServe Explorer. 
> 
>  
> 
> Our Web services strategy for sharing data among NatureServe network
> members and with the broader community is dependent upon the usability
> of these XML schemas.  For this reason, we are seeking as wide a review
> as possible among our colleagues within the biodiversity informatics
> community, and especially from those organizations that regularly rely
> on and interact with NatureServe data.  
> 
>  
> 
> Reviewers are invited to submit comments on either the content or the
> structure of the XML documents.  Content reviewers will want to follow
> the link for the human-readable documentation.  We have also provided a
> sample document for review, which contains example data in XML format
> for one species occurrence record of Ardea herodias (Great Blue Heron).
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Reviewers should also note that this schema incorporates mapped
> occurrence location information, represented as polygon shapes.  In
> compliance with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards for web map
> and web feature services, the spatial elements of the species occurrence
> schema are represented using Geography Markup Language (GML).  In
> addition to the human readable documentation, technical reviewers will
> find useful the links to the XSD documents.  Technical reviewer comments
> may cover the names of the XML tags, the nesting of the XML document,
> the structure of the XML schema, and the organization of the GML
> components.  Technical reviewer comments from organizations that may
> develop applications to consume NatureServe data as expressed by these
> XML schema are highly encouraged.
> 
>  
> 
> The NatureServe Species Occurrence Schema documentation can be found at:
> http://services.natureserve.org/technical/speciesOccurrenceSchema.htm
> 
>  
> 
> Please submit comments using the feedback forms found at the same
> location, or via email to:
> 
> services at natureserve.org

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