Dear All, I wrote up some ideas. It proved more difficult than I thought and I am not sure I captured the issue at the core of the discussion - How to deal with the lowest level of the event hierarchy
Below is the text but it is also at the bottom of our document here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_XMEgB7p7OI7a5Ouq6G9oa7LmQFPcFhZZCLD9gW...
Currently the vast majority of records in the GBIF archive contain an observation of one or more individuals of a single taxon. Many additional fields in the record, based on the Darwin Core, provide context for the observation including the observation type, the time and place of observation, the observer, etc. At the present time, however, the metadata do not provide context about whether or not an observation is part of a systematic set of observations, herein called a survey. A survey is an approach based on the idea of statistical sampling, whereby an observer is unable to measure an entire population but instead focuses on a subset of the population to make inferences about the entire population.
The added scientific value of the survey framework, over just a collection of unrelate observations indicating present only, is that a scientist can make inferences about how common or rare a taxon might be (its status) and over time, measure trends. The basic idea of a survey is intuitive: the more you look, the more you will find. In the fisheries literature this idea is called “catch per unit effort”.
The goal of the Humboldt extension is to accurately describe a survey and its often hierarchical nature. Whereas an observation record is characterized by general sense of the observation approach (Basis of Record), a time and a location, a survey has a much more detailed description of the observation technique(s), and also includes the number of sampling units employed, a time or time interval (start time and duration), and a measure of the spatial extent over which the survey was conducted.
A sampling unit, the finest measurement resolution of a survey, encompasses a variety of ways of looking for species. It might include:
A physical sample such as a leaf or a water sample containing molecules of DNA
One or several sweeps of a net containing a collection of insects
Camera trap – collection of images of mammals
Quadrat – estimating the percentage of space or numbers of space occupying organisms such as plants or clams
Bird checklist – list of species of birds observed from a fixed-point
Special considerations arise at the sampling unit level. First a measurement can detect no individuals or space occupied. In these cases the data need to reflect this fact with recording 0 for the observation. Second a measurement might be more than just a number or percentage. It might a be compound structure that includes the flowering stage of each plant in a quadrat or the length and body mass of each insect in the sweep net sample or the location of each bird along a transect.
On Wed, Jul 5, 2023 at 8:08 AM Dmitry Schigel dschigel@gbif.org wrote:
Stuck in a GBIF meeting, not joining today
DS
*From:* tdwg-humboldt tdwg-humboldt-bounces@lists.tdwg.org *On Behalf Of *John Wieczorek *Sent:* Tuesday, 4 July, 2023 21:30 *To:* Humboldt Core TG tdwg-humboldt@lists.tdwg.org *Cc:* wmh6@cornell.edu *Subject:* Re: [tdwg-humboldt] meeting this week
Hi folks,
I am giving the second module of a course on georeferencing tomorrow throughout the time of the Task Group call. I haven't mastered the two places at once thing, unfortunately.
Cheers,
John
On Tue, Jul 4, 2023 at 4:27 PM ys628 yanina.sica@yale.edu wrote:
Hi all,
Lets discuss the Hierarchical Document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_XMEgB7p7OI7a5Ouq6G9oa7LmQFPcFhZZCLD9gWOIE/editthis week!
With the TDWG 2023 rush, people might not have had time to review or work on it. If that is the case, we can have a rather short meeting to agree on the next steps.
See you!
Yani
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_XMEgB7p7OI7a5Ouq6G9oa7LmQFPcFhZZCLD9gWOIE/edit
Hierarchical Events in Humboldt Extension for ecological inventories https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_XMEgB7p7OI7a5Ouq6G9oa7LmQFPcFhZZCLD9gWOIE/edit
Properties of hierarchical Events in Humboldt Extension for ecological inventories Title: Properties of hierarchical Events in Humboldt Extension for ecological inventories Date version issued: 2023-xx-xx Date created: 2023-xx-xx Part of TDWG Standard: http://www.tdwg.org/standards/450 This ...
docs.google.com
Yanina V. Sica, PhD
Lead Data Team
Map of Life https://mol.org/ | Center for Biodiversity and Global Change https://bgc.yale.edu/
Yale University
pronouns: she/her/hers
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