Historical botanical collections (at least) often have an altitudinal range on the label. We use the minimum and maximum elevation for that, in order to accurately reflect what is on the label. I can also imagine that if a plant is common in a certain vegetation zone on a mountain you may want to just report that it occurs between certain altitudes. Being from the Netherlands I can't really speak with any authority about altitude, so I am just suggesting a couple of possible use cases, not ventilating an opinion on whether or not these are appropriate uses.
Niels
___________________________________________________________
Niels Klazenga Programmer Information Technology, Biodiversity Information Officer
National Herbarium of Victoria, Royal Botanic Gardens Birdwood Avenue South Yarra, VIC 3141 Australia Tel: (03) 9252 2346 Fax: (03) 9252 2444
e-mail: niels.klazenga@rbg.vic.gov.au
"Markus Döring (GBIF)"mdoering@gbif.org 3/07/2012 6:41 PM >>>
Hi,
I always considered the min/max terms for elevation and depth to be useful to express uncertainties. But if that is the main or only use case wouldn't it be less confusing to treat uncertainty the same way across all geospatial terms? I would much prefer to work with elevationInMeters and elevationUncertaintyInMeters than min max.
Markus
PS: There are actually 4 terms for location precision right now: coordinateUncertaintyInMeters coordinatePrecision pointRadiusSpatialFit footprintSpatialFit
On 03.07.2012, at 08:57, Aaike De Wever wrote:
Dear John, Dear all,
Thanks a lot for the answers so far.
I am still curious about a good example of the min/max use, at first
I
thought the trawl sampling was a good example as well, but I guess
it
rather applies if you sampled an area with a certain radius around
the
provided coordinates. As most data we will encounter will come from
a
single point/elevation/depth, I am just a little worried that it may puzzle data providers that they have to provide both min and max.
With best regards, Aaike
Hi Aaike,
These values are indeed meant to capture the range of possible elevation/depth or the extent of them. If there upper and lower
bounds
are the same, then the values in the minimum and maximum should be
the
same.
Cheers,
John
On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Aaike De Wever aaike.dewever@naturalsciences.be wrote: Dear all,
Following on my previous email, I also had a question on the
following terms:
- minimumElevationInMeters - maximumElevationInMeters
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/minimumElevationInMeters - http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/maximumElevationInMeters The lower limit of the range of elevation (altitude, usually above
sea
level), in meters.
- minimumDepthInMeters - maximumDepthInMeters
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/minimumDepthInMeters - http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/maximumDepthInMeters The lesser/greater depth of a range of depth below the local surface,
in
meters.
Both for elevation and depth there are two terms representing the
minimum
and maximum, which I figure are meant to provide a range. As in most cases, for point data, there will be only one elevation and depth
value, I
was wondering what is the recommended best practice for these terms. Should one use minimum or maximum or provide the same value for both terms?
Any advise on this would be appreciated!
With best regards,
Aaike De Wever BioFresh Science Officer Freshwater Laboratory, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences Vautierstraat 29, 1000 Brussels Belgium tel.: +32(0)2 627 43 90 mobile.: +32(0)486 28 05 93 email: aaike.dewever@naturalsciences.be skype: aaikew AIM: aaike@mac.com LinkedIn: http://be.linkedin.com/in/aaikedewever BioFresh: http://www.freshwaterbiodiversity.eu/ and http://data.freshwaterbiodiversity.eu/ Belgian Biodiversi
ty Platform: http://www.biodiversity.be
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