Some questions about geospatial data

[mclenard]

Hello,

I'm currently working on a project to convert observation records held by my city government to simple Darwin Core for upload to GBIF and potentially public use. This will be my first time using the Darwin Core standard, however, and I have a few questions about how to handle the associated geospatial data.

1. One of the databases has lat/long data but they would like it obscured for state or federally protected species. They said going out to at least the county level would be best. In a case like this, is there a best practice for how to do this obscuring (with coordinate uncertainty or dataset generalizations, for instance) or would it make more sense to omit coordinates for these species and just leave the state/county filled in?

2. The other datasets don't have coordinate data, so the closest we have is which park the observations occurred in. Is there a preferred way to handle this situation? Should I try to give coordinates for the park and then give a radius? Perhaps a different approach?

Thanks for your time, and sorry if these are really basic questions or repeats of questions asked previously - I'm quite new to working with biodiversity data and want to make sure I'm actually using the standard as intended as much as possible.

[tucotuco]

Good questions, and a good opportunity to share some useful links to newly renovated documentation.

1. GBIF is in the process of preparing "Current Practices for Generalizing Sensitive Species Occurrence Data" (Chapman 2020) for public commentary. This is a revision of an earlier document, also published by GBIF, and with the same basic messages: 1) document what you do in dwc:dataGeneralizations and dwc:informationWithheld, and 2) do NOT randomize coordinates. Along with that you need to remove any of the descriptive information that would compromise the specific location.
2. Shortly after the Sensitive Species document goes out for public commentary, so too will three georeferencing documents, "Georeferencing Best Practices" (GBP, Chapman and Wieczorek 2020), "Georeferencing Quick Reference Guide" (GQRG, Zermoglio et al. 2020), and the "Georeferencing Calculator Manual" (GCM, Bloom et al. 2020) to accompany the newly updated "Georeferencing Calculator" (GC, Wieczorek and Wieczorek 2020). The georeferencing process is the same regardless of the type of feature in the description if the locality type consists of a "Geographic feature only", whether National Park or otherwise. The process is to find the corrected center (see GQRG or GBP for the explanation of what a corrected center is) of the feature (e.g., park) as the coordinates, and measure the geographic radial (the distance to the further point on the boundary of the feature) from the corrected center as the "Radial of feature". Use these values in the Georeferencing Calculator along with all of the other parameters required of a "Geographic feature only" locality type as given in the GQRG and GCM.The alternative or in addition to the above, if you are able to deal with shapes, is to provide the shape for the park in dwc:footprintWKT and its coordinate reference system in dwc:footprintSRS. Chapman AD (2020) Current Best Practices for Generalizing Sensitive Species Occurrence Data. Copenhagen: GBIF Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.15468/doc-5jp4-5g10 Chapman AD & Wieczorek J (2020) Georeferencing Best Practices. Copenhagen: GBIF Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.15468/doc-gg7h-s853 Zermoglio PF, Chapman AD, Wieczorek JR, Luna MC, Bloom DA 2020. Georeferencing Quick Reference Guide. Copenhagen: GBIF Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.35035/e09p-h128 Bloom DA, Wieczorek JR, Zermoglio PF 2020. Georeferencing Calculator Manual. Copenhagen: GBIF Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.35035/gdwq-3v93 Wieczorek C & Wieczorek J 2020. Georeferencing Calculator. Version 2020-01-31. Rauthiflor LLC. Available: http://georeferencing.org/georefcalculator/gc.html [Accessed 4 Apr 2020]  

[alanstenhouse]

The DOI for the Calculator Manual appears incorrect https://doi.org/10.35035/gdwq-3v93.

[pzermoglio]

@alanstenhouse The DOI is correct, it just does not resolve yet. The documents listed by @tucotuco above are to be published by GBIF soon this year, and then those DOIs will resolve. In the meantime, you may want to take a look at the draft version of the Calculator Manual.