With only comments from Bob & Arthur (thanks!), the latest version of observation definitions is as follows:
"An observation characterizes the evidence for the presence or absence of an organism or set of organisms through a data collection event at a location. Observations are not necessarily independent and could be linked via characteristics such as time, place, protocol, and co-occurring organisms."
With the following draft elaborations for various terms (many thanks to Bob Peet for providing most of these draft definitions):
1) occurrence
"Occurrence" has been changed to "evidence for the presence or absence".
The key idea is that the organism or set of organisms was either detected or not. We also need to provide an opportunity for the recorder to note the certainty.
As an aside, recall we need to support minimalist protocols (e.g. "organism/community (not)seen in field", "organism heard in field", "scat seen in field", "tracks seen in field", "museum collection".)
2) data collection event
An event, during or after which at least the minimum required data were recorded.
3) location
Ideally, at least geocoordinates plus an accuracy term. Since there is a considerable amount of historical / legacy data that does not presently have a georeference yet has valuable information that should be included in observation databases and shared, we cannot at this time require data to be in a GIS format.
I (Lynn) suggest: (a) Location information be required, preferably geocoordinates and mapping precision, but if not available then a text description and the finest level of geolocation using the Darwin Core attributes.
(b) Location data include the representation of observations as point, line, or polygon data (with the necessary spatial metadata).
4) entity
Dropped from the definition of observation.
5) could be linked
Can have a pointer or pointers to other observations, thereby creating aggregate observations. Note that commonality of date, time, place, etc. is not sufficient in that the none of the observation authors explicitly made the connection
Please share your comments / thoughts on all of the above definitions with this email list.
If people are generally comfortable with the above as working defintions, then I'd like to propose that we move into the fun part of identifying attributes to be developed into a schema.
Thank you - Lynn
Lynn Kutner Data Management Coordinator NatureServe phone: (303) 541-0360 email: lynn_kutner@natureserve.org http://www.natureserve.org/