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 there. My sense is that the elaborations need to be expanded a bit more. For example, data collection event. I suggest that we include in the definition some information about time, minimum required data, and so forth. These definitions can be longer and more detailed than the observation definition. So taking data collection event: An event, during or after which at least the minimum required data were recorded.

Can we identify the minimum required data? For us it is: who the collector is where the information was collected (and should refer to occurrence information and all of the discussion with it) when the data and time what was observed (and how many) effort distance covered, time spent etc. I'm sure there are other data for the minimum required data and this is worth discussion. We should also discuss the event. For example, one of ours and Bird Studies Canada projects (Project FeederWatch) the event can last 2 days. We also need to think about whether we want to include protocol. In our definitions no protocol (incidental observation) is also a protocol. Anyway, thanks for the improvements on the definition of observation. I (like Lynn) look forward to discussing some of these other issues. Steve At 05:03 PM 2/8/2006 -0500, you wrote:

With only comments from Bob & Arthur (thanks!), the latest version of observation definitions is as follows:

"An observation characterizes the evidence for the presence or absence of an organism or set of organisms through a data collection event at a location. Observations are not necessarily independent and could be linked via characteristics such as time, place, protocol, and co-occurring organisms."

With the following draft elaborations for various terms (many thanks to Bob Peet for providing most of these draft definitions):

1) occurrence

"Occurrence" has been changed to "evidence for the presence or absence".

The key idea is that the organism or set of organisms was either detected or not. We also need to provide an opportunity for the recorder to note the certainty.

As an aside, recall we need to support minimalist protocols (e.g. "organism/community (not)seen in field", "organism heard in field", "scat seen in field", "tracks seen in field", "museum collection".)

2) data collection event

An event, during or after which at least the minimum required data were recorded.

3) location

Ideally, at least geocoordinates plus an accuracy term. Since there is a considerable amount of historical / legacy data that does not presently have a georeference yet has valuable information that should be included in observation databases and shared, we cannot at this time require data to be in a GIS format.

I (Lynn) suggest: (a) Location information be required, preferably geocoordinates and mapping precision, but if not available then a text description and the finest level of geolocation using the Darwin Core attributes.

(b) Location data include the representation of observations as point, line, or polygon data (with the necessary spatial metadata).

4) entity

Dropped from the definition of observation.

5) could be linked

Can have a pointer or pointers to other observations, thereby creating aggregate observations. Note that commonality of date, time, place, etc. is not sufficient in that the none of the observation authors explicitly made the connection

Please share your comments / thoughts on all of the above definitions with this email list.

If people are generally comfortable with the above as working defintions, then I'd like to propose that we move into the fun part of identifying attributes to be developed into a schema.

Thank you - Lynn

Lynn Kutner Data Management Coordinator NatureServe phone: (303) 541-0360 email: lynn_kutner@natureserve.org http://www.natureserve.org/

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