Hi Gail,
Yes, and this gets back to Donald's original point, and one I've wrestled with for a long time -- which boils down to, "what, exactly, are we interested in knowing"?
In my experience, most people seem most concerned with whether an organism got to where it was captured/observed/photographed/surveyed/monitored/whatever with the aid of humans, or without. I think the reason for this is that most people distinguich between "natural" and "artificial" on the basis of how much control humans had in it.
After that, the next most important question tends to be whether it's an anomalous occurrence, or a locally reproducing population. This is where we get into waifs & vagrants (I see the examples you gave as subcategories of "Native", in my hyper-simplified vocabulary in my earlier post); and from there, it gets into shades of grey on how "established" the population is (e.g., does it achieve the threshold of "naturalized"?)
Unfortunately, these two things (how it got there, vs. whether it's locally reproducing) are really different metrics, yet people often try to combine them into the same category.
From my read of http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#establishmentMeans,
both metrics are evident. In a sense, the presence of the word "established" might seem to restrict it to only locally-reproducing populations. However, one could also interpret the word "establish" in the context of individual organism (e.g., how did this individual Ross's Gull get established in Massachusetts?)
The GBIF vocabulary that Dave sent the link for also seems to mix the two metrics.
And there are other considerations I've seen in databases as well (including our own): such as the distinction between "adventive" and "intentional" introductions. Also, the word "invasive" (one of the examples on the DwC page for establishmentMeans) suggests another angle, implying some sort of "harm" done to the ecosystems or to human interests such as agriculture.
So again, I ask: "What, exactly, are we interested in knowing?" If I read Donald correctly, he simply wants to filter out occurrence records of Pandas in Washington DC. But Niche Modellers might come from a different angle, and seek evidence of whether or not an organism is capable of sustaining a locally reproducing population in some particular place (regardless of whether the founders of the pupulation were brought by humans, or got there on their own).
If we can answer that question, then the next question will be whether we can pack all the answers into a single controlled vocabulary for "establishmentMeans", or whether we may need to think about another DwC term, with a slightly different meaning.
Aloha, Rich
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From: Gail Kampmeier [mailto:gkamp@illinois.edu] Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 4:41 PM To: Richard Pyle Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz Your human-centered distinctions will likely prove to be useful in certain contexts (quarantine; invasive species watches), but think of birds or insects blown or carried into areas by meteorological events that survive and become established for a season or more, or as curiosities of observation (Ross's gull in Massachusetts). Range extension is important in climate change research and may have nothing to do with direct human activities outlined below.
Cheers! Gail
On Oct 11, 2010, at 9:26 PM, Richard Pyle wrote:
I certainly agree it's important! I was just saying that a simple flag probably wouldn't be enough. I like the idea of a controlled vocabulary (as you and John both allude to), and I can imagine about a half-dozen terms that our community will no-doubt adopt with almost no debate..... :-) In my mind, the broadest categories (and likely most useful) would be something like: Native (was there without any assistance from humans) Introduced (got there with the assistance of humans, but is inhabiting the natural environment) Captive (brought by humans and still maintained in captivity) You might also throw in "Cryptogenic", which is an assertion that we do not know which of these categories a particular organism falls (not the same as null, which means we don't know whether or not we know) Of course, each of these can be further subdivded, but the more we subdivide, the greater the ratio of fuzzy:clean distinctions. I would say that the terms should be established in consultation with those most likely to use them (e.g., as you suggest, distribution analysis, niche modellers, etc.) For example, it might be useful to distinguish between an organism that was itself introduced, compared to the progeny (or a well-established population) of an intoduced organism. This information can be useful for separating things likely to become established in new localities, vs. things that do not seem to "take" in a novel environment. Anyway...I didn't want to say a lot on this topic (too late?); I just wanted to steer more towards controlled vocabulary, than simple flag field. Aloha, Rich
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From: Donald.Hobern@csiro.au [mailto:Donald.Hobern@csiro.au] Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 3:44 PM To: Richard Pyle; tuco@berkeley.edu Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz Hi Rich. I recognise this (and could probably define many different useful flags). The bottom line is really whether or not the location is one which should be used for distribution analysis, niche modelling and similar activities. There will certainly be many grey areas, but it would be good if software could weed out captive occurrences. Donald <image001.png> Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living Australia CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601 Phone: (02) 62464352 Mobile: 0437990208 Email: Donald.Hobern@csiro.au mailto:Donald.Hobern@csiro.au Web: http://www.ala.org.au/ From: Richard Pyle [mailto:deepreef@bishopmuseum.org] Sent: Tuesday, 12 October 2010 12:33 PM To: Hobern, Donald (CES, Black Mountain); tuco@berkeley.edu Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz I'm not so sure a simple flag will do it. We have examples ranging from animals in zoos, to escaped animals, to intentionally and unintentionally introduced populations, to naturalized populations -- and just about everything in-between. Where on this spectrum would you draw the line for flagging something as "naturally occurring"? Rich
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From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Donald.Hobern@csiro.au Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 2:59 PM To: tuco@berkeley.edu Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz
Thanks, John. This is useful, but completely uncontrolled - effectively a verbatimEstablishmentMeans. Having a more controlled version or a simple flag which could be machine-processible in those cases where providers can supply it would be useful. Donald <image001.png> Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living Australia CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601 Phone: (02) 62464352 Mobile: 0437990208 Email: Donald.Hobern@csiro.au mailto:Donald.Hobern@csiro.au Web: http://www.ala.org.au/ From: gtuco.btuco@gmail.com [mailto:gtuco.btuco@gmail.com] On Behalf Of John Wieczorek Sent: Tuesday, 12 October 2010 11:34 AM To: Hobern, Donald (CES, Black Mountain) Cc: jsachs@csee.umbc.edu; tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com; tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz
Natural occurrence is meant to be captured through the term dwc:establishmentMeans (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#establishmentMeans).
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Donald.Hobern@csiro.au wrote: Thanks, Joel. Nice summary. One addition which we do need to resolve (and which has been suggested in recent months) is to have a flag to indicate whether a record should be considered to show a "natural" occurrence (in distinction from cultivation, botanic gardens, zoos, etc.). This is not so much an issue in a BioBlitz, but is certainly a factor with citizen science recording in general - see the number of zoo animals in the Flickr EOL group. Donald Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living Australia CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601 Phone: (02) 62464352 Mobile: 0437990208 Email: Donald.Hobern@csiro.au Web: http://www.ala.org.au/
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of joel sachs Sent: Monday, 11 October 2010 10:47 PM To: tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com; tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Subject: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz One of the goals of the recent bioblitz was to think about the suitability and appropriatness of TDWG standards for citizen science. Robert Stevenson has volunteered to take the lead on preparing a technobioblitz lessons learned document, and though the scope of this document is not yet determined, I think the audience will include bioblitz organizers, software developers, and TDWG as a whole. I hope no one is shy about sharing lessons they think they learned, or suggestions that they have. We can use the bioblitz google group for this discussion, and copy in tdwg-content when our discussion is standards-specific. Here are some of my immediate observations: 1. Darwin Core is almost exactly right for citizen science. However, there is a desperate need for examples and templates of its use. To illustrate this need: one of the developers spoke of the design choice between "a simple csv file and a Darwin Core record". But a simple csv file is a legitimate representation of Darwin Core! To be fair to the developer, such a sentence might not have struck me as absurd a year ago, before Remsen said "let's use DwC for the bioblitz". We provided a couple of example DwC records (text and rdf) in the bioblitz data profile [1]. I think the lessons learned document should include an on-line catalog of cut-and-pasteable examples covering a variety of use cases, together with a dead simple desciption of DwC, something like "Darwin Core is a collection of terms, together with definitions." Here are areas where we augemented or diverged from DwC in the bioblitz: i. We added obs:observedBy [2], since there is no equivalent property in DwC, and it's important in Citizen Science (though often not available). ii. We used geo:lat and geo:long [3] instead of DwC terms for latitude and longitude. The geo namespace is a well used and supported standard, and records with geo coordinates are automatically mapped by several applications. Since everyone was using GPS to retrieve their coordinates, we were able to assume WGS-84 as the datum. If someone had used another Datum, say XYZ, we would have added columns to the Fusion table so that they could have expressed their coordiantes in DwC, as, e.g.: DwC:decimalLatitude=41.5 DwC:decimalLongitude=-70.7 DwC:geodeticDatum=XYZ (I would argue that it should be kosher DwC to express the above as simply XYZ:lat and XYZ:long. DwC already incorporates terms from other namespaces, such as Dublin Core, so there is precedent for this. 2. DwC:scientificName might be more user friendly than taxonomy:binomial and the other taxonomy machine tags EOL uses for flickr images. If DwC:scientificName isn't self-explanatory enough, a user can look it up, and see that any scientific name is acceptable, at any taxonomic rank, or not having any rank. And once we have a scientific name, higher ranks can be inferred. 3. Catalogue of Life was an important part of the workflow, but we had some problems with it. Future bioblitzes might consider using something like a CoL fork, as recently described by Rod Page [4]. 4. We didn't include "basisOfRecord" in the original data profile, and so it wasn't a column in the Fusion Table [5]. But when a transcriber felt it was necessary to include in order to capture data in a particular field sheet, she just added the column to the table. This flexibility of schema is important, and is in harmony with the semantic web. 5. There seemed to be enthusiasm for another field event at next year's TDWG. This could be an opportunity to gather other types of data (eg. character data) and thereby i) expose meeting particpants to another set of everyday problems from the world of biodiversity workflows, and ii) try other TDWG technology on for size, e.g. the observation exchange format, annotation framework, etc. Happy Thanksgiving to all in Canada - Joel. ---- 1. http://groups.google.com/group/tdwg-bioblitz/web/tdwg-bioblitz-profile-v1-1 2. Slightly bastardizing our old observation ontology - http://spire.umbc.edu/ontologies/Observation.owl 3. http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/ 4. http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/10/replicating-and-forking-data-in-2010.html 5. http://tables.googlelabs.com/DataSource?dsrcid=248798 _______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content _______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
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