I fully agree with Jerry. It may be helpful for us to start not by thinking of observations by themselves, but rather to think of 'surveys' or some other similar higher class of objects. A 'survey' is a definition of the protocols surrounding a set of 'observations' and is the correct place to record all of the information about the methods involved, wherever that falls along Jerry's hypothetical continuum. Each 'observation' is then associated with a 'survey'. The most casual kind of 'observations' may be associated with a null 'survey' indicating that little or nothing can be inferred about the communities, populations and interactions of this and other taxa in the given area on the basis of this isolated point event.

It is likely too that 'surveys' need the option of being defined recursively to reflect the fact that a particular 'survey' may itself fit into a higher-level organisation of coordinated activity. For example a transect may be part of an annual series for a given locality, within a national scheme for monitoring a randomly selected set of transects.

The main point is that the interest in 'observations' is not exactly the same as for specimens. At an early stage in the development of GBIF, we tended to treat observations as little more than voucherless specimens. This ignores what is generally the most significant aspect of such data, the organisation of those point events into a framework of observations in which every observation (including every zero count) gives context to the others. We need to focus on capturing this, rather than treating 'observation' data simply as a set of modifier attributes to a standard Darwin Core taxon occurrence record.

Donald

--------------------------------------------------------------- Donald Hobern (dhobern@gbif.org) Programme Officer for Data Access and Database Interoperability Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45-35321483 Mobile: +45-28751483 Fax: +45-35321480 ---------------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message----- From: Tdwg-obs-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:Tdwg-obs-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Jerry Cooper Sent: 19 October 2005 23:45 To: Tdwg-obs@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [Tdwg-obs] What is an observation?

I support Hannu's view.

I still see a bit of confusion created by the overlap between 'a natural history oriented observations' and 'survey/monitoring observations'. The former is generally a serendipitous event and is well described within ABCD. The latter generally places a much greater emphasis on recording the relationships between organisms and with the surrounding environment and the methodology used to capture these data. Does the community see a difference between these two - or a continuum between them? Is this group primarily concerned with the former, or the latter, or both? If it is the former then I think I'm in the wrong group, and maybe we need a seprate group to consider survey/monitoring events. If it is the latter, or a continuum, then I restate what I said in St Petersburgh. For survey/monitoring data it is the methodology metdata that takes precedence and that should act as a container for 1 to many observations of organisms and environmental variables. That is the inverse of say, Darwin Core, where an observation on a single organism takes precedence. Hence the difficulty in recording 'absence' data within a Darwin Core-like schema.

Jerry

Jerry Cooper PhD Research Leader: Biodiversity Informatics Landcare Research PO Box 40, Lincoln 8152 New Zealand +64 3 325 6701 ext 3734 CooperJ@LandcareResearch.CO.NZ

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Hannu Saarenmaa hsaarenmaa@gbif.org 20/10/2005 3:40 a.m. >>>

How about this: An observation captures data about the occurrence of an organism in space and time and in relation to habitat and other organisms. Documenting the precision, accuracy, certainty, and methods of the measurements that have been made during an observation is essential for determining the fitness for use of the data that has been captured. An observation is an event that can be linked to other events.

Indeed, I would like to emphasise the need of documenting what is called "quality".

Hannu

Steve Kelling wrote:

Hello,

I had several people respond to my query about what kinds of things we should discuss in this list. Overwhelmingly, the interest seemed focused on

defining some of the key terms that we are bantering about. To that end I'd

like to initiate the first discussion on this list by asking, what is an observation? What follows is some information that I gleaned from the Internet, discussions that I have had with others, and with the ENBI reports. I'd appreciate your comments, in our goal to create a good definintion of observation for our purposes.--Steve

Princeton University's Wordnet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/http://wordnet.princeton.edu/) defines an observation as the act of making and then recording a measurement. Basically, something is watched, and notes are taken about it. In the study

of biology and astronomy careful observations made by trained observations and amateurs alike, is the foundation of information gathered for these disciplines.

With regard to biodiversity informatics, particularly as to how observations relate to the existing infrastructure, the above definition is

too general, because it encompasses all facets of biology. Consequently, we

need to begin to qualify the definition of observation. First, we restrict our definition to only those observations made of organisms in the environment. Second, the location at which the observation was made is an integral component of the observation. Third, an observation is exclusive of museum voucher specimens. Finally, information collected during an observation includes additional attributes such as: protocol, measure of abundance, extent of occurrence, demographic, ecological associates, and environmental conditions.

To discuss and ultimately added to the definition:

Advantages of observational data. Disadvantages of observational data Observational data providers (amateurs/professionals) Detectability and data quality Location specificity Integration of observational data Definition of a collecting event and its significance others?

Steve Kelling Cornell Lab of Ornithology 607-254-2478 (work) 607-342-1029 (cell)

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