Hi John,
Thanks for your comments. Regarding the community of potential users: The impetus for putting this proposal together came from a workshop we ran on data interoperability for invasive species research, management and policy making. This was a meeting of about 30 scientists from the Alien Challenge COST Action and their invited guests ( http://www.brc.ac.uk/alien-challenge/wg4). We are currently writing up the finding of the workshop, but rather than just complain about all the problems of data interoperability, I thought it would be good to do something about it.
The users of the establishmentMeans vocabulary are intended to be researchers of introduction pathways, with the expectation that this information will ultimately filter through to policy making on such things as import restrictions. The vocabulary has been taken from the IUCN so that should be agreeable to a wide range of users.
The controlled vocabulary for occurrenceStatus and the addition of origin are largely intended for users creating check-lists with Darwin Core. These terms are less suitable for individual occurrences. The knowledge of when an organism came to an area and whether it is still there is widely used by conservationists and those interested in alien species. Currently, Darwin Core is not very strict on its controlled vocabularies and I found it necessary to add the new term ‘origin’ to be able to separate the length of time a taxon had persisted at a site from how it had got there.
I have already received useful input from various people involved with invasive species, including Annie Simpson and Peter Desmet, but I'm curious to know what the wider biodiversity community thinks of the proposal.
Regards Quentin
Dr. Quentin Groom (Botany and Information Technology)
Botanic Garden Meise Domein van Bouchout B-1860 Meise Belgium
ORCID: 0000-0002-0596-5376 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0596-5376
Landline; +32 (0) 226 009 20 ext. 364 FAX: +32 (0) 226 009 45
E-mail: quentin.groom@plantentuinmeise.be Skype name: qgroom Website: www.botanicgarden.be
On 23 May 2016 at 20:36, John Wieczorek tuco@berkeley.edu wrote:
Hi Quentin,
Thank you for your effort in putting forth these welll thought out proposals. At various times I have heard discussions on the inadequecy of establishmentMeans. Your work encapsulates the problem well. One of the things that helps when proposing to add a Darwin Core term is demonstrating that there is a community that needs it. Can you tell us who has a demonstrated need to share this information? Anyone out there who has this interest is also welcome to share that here to provide evidence of demand from more than one group, project or individual.
Cheers,
John
On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 3:23 PM, Quentin Groom < quentin.groom@plantentuinmeise.be> wrote:
I've been working on a proposal to improve Darwin Core for use with invasive species data.
The proposal is detailed on GitHub at https://github.com/qgroom/ias-dwc-proposal/blob/master/proposal.md.
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
ORCID: 0000-0002-0596-5376 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0596-5376
Landline; +32 (0) 226 009 20 ext. 364 FAX: +32 (0) 226 009 45
E-mail: quentin.groom@plantentuinmeise.be Skype name: qgroom Website: www.botanicgarden.be
tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content