Hi again, I agree that Sabine's point is really pertinent, and I believe can be covered by a DarwinCore field called BasisOfObservation (or something along those lines). The record can be use to describe an observation, a specimen, or a sample of some sort, which is linked to the presence of an organism. I believe that as long as you can put a taxonomic name to a sample, it can easily be described using the existing core structure, plus some discipline-specific descriptors. The taxonomic name doesn't have to down to the species level (can be family, order, etc.). The main issue here will be to standardize how people are allowed to use the BasisOfObservation field (through controlled vocabulary), and to find ways to know whether you are reporting measurements (eg, mass) about the sample only or the full organism. Where I think this will break down is when you'll try to describe non-living things (rocks, clouds, whatever). You probably still could to some extent, but that'd be a stretch of the primary purpose of a schema used for describing biodiversity monitoring. Good weekend everyone Denis -----Original Message----- From: Tdwg-obs-bounces@lists.tdwg.org on behalf of tdwg@achapman.org Sent: Fri 2/10/2006 16:55 To: Tdwg-obs@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [Tdwg-obs] Antw: Re: On observation definition / moving forward Denis, I agree with your sentiments here, and it is the only way we can handle the vast amount of differences. More than people expect, however, can be generalised for different groups. Allan Allison and myself had an intereting example of this in Indonesia many years ago where we were working with foresters, fisherman, insect people and botanists, and trying to look at the common denominator in as many fields as possible. One that came up was collecting method where virtually every group saw their group as so specialised and wanted fields that would only apply to them (fishermen for example for net type, size etc.) We eventually got them all to see that we could use just "collecting method" with a different set of terms for each group. But I think Sabine has an additional point that needs to be covered. If I read Sabine rightly, she is talking about what the observation may be and not necessarily the aspects of that observation (measurements etc.). I think there are perhaps two aspects to what she is saying. I can see the need for observation of "scat" or "hair" for mammals, "pupa" "lavae" for insects, "fruit" for plants, "nest" for a bird, etc. where these may have been observed separately from the main animal/plant etc. It is an observation, but not an obseration of the whole animal/plant, etc. I am not sure that 'Unit' is the best term, though - worth discussing. Cheers Arthur D. Chapman Toowoomba, Australia

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From Denis Lepage <dlepage@bsc-eoc.org> on 10 Feb 2006:

Hi Sabine,

What you describe for plants is very much like what we often find in ver> tebrates.

At any given sampling event, you may want to characterise differently un> its that belong to the same taxon. In birds, if you are talking about ba> nding (ringing) data, you typically want to record the characteristics o> f each individual (mass, body measurements, sex, band number, etc.). For> that reason, a schema needs to allow repeating the same taxonomic unit

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multiple times in the same sampling event, each record with its own char> acteristics. On the other hand, if you have a group of organisms that al> l share exactly the same characteristics, it makes a lot more sense to h> ave a field that tell you how many times this unit was repeated, rather than have separate records for each.

For all biodiversity monitoring, there are common fields that will allow> you to describe what your unit is (taxonomic fields), in addition to ot> her fields such date, time, location, etc. But each discipline will also> have its own requirements. Bird banders typically do not care about soi> l or water pH, and you surely do not need to describe whether your units> had a brood patch.

In a schema, the way to handle this is to put everything that is common

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to all disciplines in the core list of fields. DarwinCore already gives a number of those fields, but there are more common fields that can be a> dded (DarwinCore was initially designed for museum specimens). Everythin> g that is specific to a limited number of disciplines then need to be pa> rt of a schema extension. In birds monitoring, we think so far that this> will represent about 4 or 5 different extensions (one for surveys, one for bird banding, one for nest records, etc.). The agrobiodiversity comm> unity will have to work on it's own extensions, as will other communitie> s (which don't necessarily have to be taxon-based).

Cheers Denis

Denis Lepage, Senior Scientist/Chercheur sénior National Data Center/Centre national des données Bird Studies Canada/Études d'Oiseaux Canada PO Box/B.P. 160, Port Rowan, ON N0E 1M0 519-586-3531 ext. 225, fax/téléc. 519-586-3532

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-----Original Message----- From: Tdwg-obs-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:Tdwg-obs-bounces@lists.tdwg.org]On Behalf Of SABINE ROSCHER Sent: 10 February 2006 9:11 AM To: Tdwg-obs@lists.tdwg.org Subject: [Tdwg-obs] Antw: Re: On observation definition / moving forward

Hello,

We work in the field of agrobiodiversity, e.g. crop wild relatives. For us the combination of oberservation data and samples is very important.

We consider the unit as central element, which can be a part of an organism, an ogranism, or a group of organisms. The reason for going under the level of organism is that sometimes the plant with all roots etc. can be quite larger than the part that is observed and recorded for a certain location.

This describes the line we think along : "A unit in our context is uniquely identified by time, place(site) and taxonomy. In addition a particular unit could be sampled to further assist in characterising it. Such samples could be (1) seed samples/planting material (classical ex situ accessions), (2) photos or (3) herbarium vouchers."

UNIT {time, site, taxonomy} (+ sample)

(With regard to the prior discussion I agree that we also have to handle legacy data with missing entries for time and place.)

Sabine

Sabine Roscher 513 - Informations- und Koordinationszentrum für Biologische Vielfalt (IBV) Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung Deichmanns Aue 29, 53179 Bonn Tel.: +49 (0)228 6845-3235 (oder -3237) Fax: +49 (0)228 6845-3787 E-Mail: sabine.roscher@ble.de Internet: www.ble.de weiterführende Information: www.genres.de

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Steve Kelling <stk2@cornell.edu> 09.02.2006 18:55 >>> Hello, I really like the improvements made on the definition, and I might suggest that I put it up on the TDWG-obs website http://www.avianknowledge.net/tdwg. I think we still need to define occurrence, and I think that Arthur Chapman's "species occurrence data" gets us most of the way

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