I don't think that dwc:establishmentMeans should be deprecated.  It's possible that the definition or list of recommended values should be changed, but I think it satisfies an important use case as it is currently defined (or at least the way that I understand its definition).  My understanding of the use case (based on previous discussion on this list from years ago) is as a filter for occurrence records - to allow the searcher to exclude occurrence records based on the amount of human intervention that was involved in the organism being established at the particular location where it was found in the occurrence.  There is a sort of gradient of intervention:

native: no human intervention was ever involved in causing the organism's species to occur at that location.  Example: http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/ind-baskauf/10897 where an Acer negundo individual was found in a forest with no apparent human intervention to cause that individual to be there.

naturalised: human intervention was involved in causing the species to occur at that location, but the population persists at that location without human intervention.  Example: http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/ind-baskauf/12179 where a Taraxacum officinale individual was found in a lawn.  Taraxacum officinale arrived in Cheatham County, Tennessee as a result of human intervention, but no human did anything to make that individual be at that location.  In fact, humans are probably trying to get rid of its population, but it still persists.

adventitive: human intervention was involved in causing the species to occur at that location, but no intentional effort was made to cause that particular individual to be there and the population is not likely to persist.  Example: http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/ind-baskauf/33559 where a Triticum aestivum individual was found growing in a construction site.  Triticum aestivum is not native to Cheatham County, Tennessee and as far as I know, populations of it do not persist in the area without human intervention.  This individual was not managed in an agricultural field; rather it appeared to have gotten started accidentally from straw used as mulch to protect planted grass seed.

managed: human intervention was involved in causing the species to occur at that location, and intentional efforts cause the organism to be at that location and to persist there.  Example: http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbilt/12-43 where an Acer negundo was present as part of landscaping on a college campus. 

Maintaining a "gradient" of values like this allows a user to perform a variety of screens on occurrence data.  Users may only want native occurrences, perhaps because they want to collect DNA from native populations or want to see what the organism looks like when it grows in its native habitat.  Users may search for native+naturalised occurrences in order to develop a checklist of species that are likely to be found over a long period of time in natural areas.  Users may search for native+naturalised+adventive occurrences to develop a list of organisms that might be found in an area, including incidental occurrences.   Users may search for managed occurrences to find locations (which would include zoos and botanical gardens) where they might be able to easily obtain samples of the organism from a contact person.

Using dwc:establishmentMeans as a value for occurrence records of a particular organism at a very precise location and a particular time is a very different use case that using it to assess populations of organisms in a broader area over a broader time to find out things such as whether a species is invading an area or not.  In the examples above, Acer negundo is a native species to Tennessee, but http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbilt/12-43 is not a native occurrence of Acer negundo since it was planted and managed by humans at that location.

I agree that the two (or more) uses of dwc:establishmentMeans probably should be separated.  My guess would be that using dwc:establishmentMeans the way that I described it above is more common, but I may just be biased because that's the way that I use it.  The way I've described its use seems to be very much in keeping with the definition that is given for the term.  If I had my way, I'd get rid of the value "invasive" and add the value "adventive" to the list of recommended values.  "Invasive" is the value that doesn't really fit, because it's really difficult to assess that status based on a single occurrence record.  The GBIF Establishment Means controlled vocabulary at http://rs.gbif.org/vocabulary/gbif/establishment_means.xml indicates that "introduced" is a superclass for naturalised, invasive, and managed, which I suppose could have some utility if that were made clear.

One might make the case that "establishmentMeans" is not a good "name" for what the term means, and that it should be changed.  However, one should keep in mind that dwc:establishmentMeans is an abbreviation for the URI http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/establishmentMeans and as such, it's an identifier, not a descriptive label.  Changing labels doesn't "break" anything; changing URIs does.  If we don't like the definition of dwc:establishmentMeans, we should figure out how it is most commonly used and change the definition to match that use.  That would be the approach that would provide the maximum stability for Darwin Core.  I think that we made a mistake in the past when we changed dwc:individualID to dwc:organismID.  I understand that there's a desire to make the local name parts of URIs "make sense" with respect to the meaning of the term, but that's only a convention, not a requirement.  >From an application or machine perspective, dwc:t03958 is just as good of an identifier as dwc:establishmentMeans.  Get the human-readable label and definition right, but don't change or deprecate the URI unless absolutely necessary.

Steve

Quentin Groom wrote:
Dear Rich,
Thanks for taking a look at the proposal!

perhaps you could clarify your comment regarding the upper limit of "population". Is this what I would call the use of Darwin Core for observations verses checklists?

You can only tell if an organism is invasive if you monitor it over time therefore this term in inappropriate for a single observation. Also, whether something is invasive is a different concept to whether something is native or alien, both can be invasive. I seems to me that the currently suggested vocabulary for dwc:establishmentMeans is conflating two concepts. Also, none of these terms have much to do with how the organism became established.

Currently, there are no fields where nativeness can be properly described and all we need is 1. This is needed for calculating essential biodiversity variables, for horizon scanning and invasive species monitoring. This is in contrast to occurrenceStatus where we currently have three ways to declare absence.

I would have preferred to deprecate the term dwc:establishmentMeans, because its definition doesn't match its suggested vocabulary. However, I chose to retain it for the sake of stability. It has already been suggested that a better term would be introductionMeans.

I don't understand your way of indicating nativeness or how it would work. For many species nativeness is a concept based upon limited available evidence. It isn't something that can be pinned down to a particular event or location. If Darwin Core was only ever used for single observations I would agree that we don't need a term for nativeness, but as it is also used for checklists and we have to accommodate terms that relate to a taxon over a large area.

Regards
Quentin




Dr. Quentin Groom
(Botany and Information Technology)

Botanic Garden Meise
Domein van Bouchout
B-1860 Meise
Belgium


Landline; +32 (0) 226 009 20 ext. 364
FAX:      +32 (0) 226 009 45

Skype name: qgroom
Website:    www.botanicgarden.be


On 25 June 2016 at 08:13, Richard Pyle <deepreef@bishopmuseum.org> wrote:

Hi All,

 

When we discussed the scope of the class “Organism”, I believe we considered the upper limit of “population” – but I can’t remember whether we accepted that upper limit.  If so, then the “Organism” instance participating in an particular Occurrence instance could logically be qualified as “invasive” or “native” (or whatever), in which case it seems more appropriate to apply terms such as “native”, “introduced”, “invasive”, etc. to dwc:establishmentMeans

 

I realize this is squishy, but we don’t really have another class within DwC-space to which the property of “native”, “introduced”, “invasive”, etc. can be applied.  Moreover, I don’t think there SHOULD be such a class, because it short-circuits the basis for the presence of Taxon X at Location Y (i.e., this should be established via Taxon-->Identification-->Organism-->Occurrence-->Event-->Location).

 

I realize this is an extraordinarily convoluted way of saying “Taxon X is native to Location Y”; but ultimately that’s what we want…. Right?

 

Aloha,

Rich

 

From: tdwg-content [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Steve Baskauf
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2016 1:45 PM
To: Quentin Groom
Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] A proposal to improve Darwin Core for invasive species data

 

Getting caught up on this thread after a holiday. 

Some previous discussion on dwc:establishmentMeans in 2010 was at:
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-October/001730.html
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-October/001731.html

The opinion expressed in that thread was that dwc:establishmentMeans was a property of an organism at a particular place and time (i.e. an Occurrence.): how did a particular organism come to be in that place at that time.  In that view, an organism might be at a location because it was a representative of a native species, or because it was managed at that location by humans.  In that perspective, it would not make sense to use the value "invasive" with dwc:establishmentMeans because that is more of a property of a species at a location rather than an individual organism at that location and time. 

Steve

Quentin Groom wrote:

I've been working on a proposal to improve Darwin Core for use with invasive species data.

 

 

The proposal is for a new term "origin" and suggested vocabularies for establishmentMeans and occurrenceStatus.

 

I'd welcome your feedback on the proposal.

 

From my perspective it provides some needed clarity on the establishmentMeans and occurrenceStatus fields, but also adds the origin that is needed for invasive species research and for conservation assessments.

 

I'm not sure of the best way to discuss this, but if you have concrete proposals for changes you might raise them as issues on GitHub, as well as mentioning them here.

 

Regards

Quentin

 


 

 

Dr. Quentin Groom

(Botany and Information Technology)

 

Botanic Garden Meise

Domein van Bouchout

B-1860 Meise

Belgium

 

 

Landline; +32 (0) 226 009 20 ext. 364

FAX:      +32 (0) 226 009 45

 

Skype name: qgroom

Website:    www.botanicgarden.be

 



-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
 
postal mail address:
PMB 351634
Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
 
delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235
 
office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 322-4942
If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
http://vanderbilt.edu/trees
 


-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

postal mail address:
PMB 351634
Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.

delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235

office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 322-4942
If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
http://vanderbilt.edu/trees