[tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz

["Markus Döring (GBIF)"]

There are several dwc terms that need the company of others to make sense. But this "company" effectively means defining proper classes, sth that dwc did not dare to do as it opens up a can of worms. There are so many ways to model our world and they all make sense. But nevertheless these terms are useful when actually defining such classes in application schemas.

The distribution "class" we have defined as a dwc archive extension for taxa makes use of establishment means and puts it into the taxonomic, spatial and temporal context as being discussed:

http://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/distribution.xml

It also adds a lifestage qualifier to distinguish between juvenile and adults for example. 
And it allows for both a seasonal or a date range temporal context.

Markus


On Oct 13, 2010, at 4:29, Richard Pyle wrote:

> 
> Hi Hilmar,
> 
> I'm not yet convinced that dwc:establishmentMeans is not meaningful for a
> point (which I interpret as a single organism or small set of organisms
> collected or observed at a particular place/time).  I think a legitimate
> piece of metadata (i.e., something that data consumers will often want to
> know) for such "standard" occurrence record is: "Was this organism born in
> the general vicinity of its documented capture/observation, or did it arrive
> from a far-distant locality during its lifetime?"  And, if the answer is the
> latter, then many data consumers may also want to know "Was it brought by
> humans to its documented place & time, or did it manage to get there by
> so-called 'natural' means?"  Also, if the organism itself was born in the
> vicinity of its documented capture/observation, it may be useful to know
> whether its recent ancestors arrived in the vicinity with or without the
> help of humans.
> 
> These seem like esoteric (or even rediculous) questions, but I think they
> are, in essence, what people want to know in terms of why establishmentMeans
> is part of DwC.
> 
> Also, as I tried to explain in one of my previous posts, it seems to me that
> an "Occurrence" ultimately represents "a tuple of (taxon concept, location,
> time)", where location and time are generally properties of Events, and an
> Occurrence is essentially the intersection of a Taxon Concept and an Event.
> 
> Aloha,
> Rich
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Hilmar Lapp [mailto:hlapp at nescent.org] 
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 1:26 PM
>> To: Richard Pyle
>> Cc: Jerry Cooper; tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org; 
>> tdwg-bioblitz at googlegroups.com
>> Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz
>> 
>> Just trying to confirm whether my understanding from this 
>> thread so far is correct. Is there agreement that 
>> dwc:establishmentMeans is a) not meaningful for a point or 
>> region in space, or a point in time, or a taxon concept, but 
>> only for a taxon concept at a spatial location at a point in 
>> time, and b) is a judgment made by someone on the basis of 
>> certain evidence.
>> 
>> If yes, doesn't that mean that the property needs to be 
>> applied to a tuple of (taxon concept, location, time), and 
>> needs to be linked to a source and at least the kind of 
>> evidence (such as a vocabulary term) on which the judgement 
>> was made? I.e., how much worth is a dwc:establishmentMeans 
>> value that fails either of those requirements?  
>> 
>> Apologies if that's all there already.
>> 
>> -hilmar
>> 
>> Sent with a tap.=
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> tdwg-content mailing list
> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content