Darwin Core changes¶

Problems¶

• The definition of a term sometimes changes between versions of DwC, often to a less-commonly used meaning:
  • fieldNumber is commonly used to store the collector's number for the specimen (the recordNumber/collectorNumber), but was redefined by DwC to be "An identifier given to the event in the field" (i.e. the authorEventCode)
  • fieldNotes is commonly used to store the specimen description or similar notes (remarks in previous versions of DwC), but was redefined to be "the text of notes taken in the field about the Event" (i.e. the eventRemarks)
• DwC definitions of some terms differ from the scientific meanings of those terms:
  • species is supposed to be the genus + specificEpithet (the speciesBinomial), but is used by DwC (and many datasources) to refer just to the specificEpithet
• Some fields should be split apart:
  • establishmentMeans contains information for both growthform, iscultivated, and isnative
  • eventDate contains both the start and end dates of the event, requiring these to be merged or split when mapping to or from DwC
• There is no way to account for separate TaxonDeterminations in the same row, such as original vs. current determinations and accepted determinations resulting from name scrubbing.
• VegCore currently accounts for these by adding a prefix to the term indicating the type of determination:
  • (no prefix): the current, non-scrubbed determination
  • original: the original determination
  • accepted: the scrubbed name
  • verbatim: the input name for TNRS
• The lack of any DwC fields for some plot-related entities:
  • Project
  • Subplot/SubplotObservation
  • Stem/StemObservation
  • SoilObservation
  • Community
  • Voucher
• DwC is missing support for infraspecific ranks in named columns, which TCS supports:
  (These currently must be stored in infraspecificEpithet and taxonRank, but only one infraspecific rank is supported.)
  • subspecies
  • variety
  • forma
  • cultivar
• DwC is missing alternate N/S and E/W coordinates (NCU, Utrecht) and FIPS county codes (NCU)
• Because VegCore has doubled¹ the number of terms in DwC, there is clearly a lot that could be added to it

¹ There are currently 354 terms in VegCore vs. 175 in Darwin Core (a field with multiple possible unit suffixes counts as one field)
.

Compared to VegX¶

VegX has tables for all plot-related entities above (with Stem/StemObservation merged into IndividualOrganismObservation and Voucher as part of TaxonNameUsageConcept).
It adds 26 non-DwC terms to VegCore:

• recordedBy_givenName (//individualName/givenName)
• recordedBy_surName (//individualName/surName)
• projectID
• projectName (//project/title)
• locationName (//plot/plotName)
• plotArea (//plot/area)
• slopeAspect
• slopeGradient
• landform
• temperature
• phosphorus
• potassium
• magnesium
• nitrogen
• ph
• subplotX (//plot/relatedPlot/relativeSpatialCoordinate/relativeX)
• subplotY (//plot/relatedPlot/relativeSpatialCoordinate/relativeY)
• communityID (//communityConcept/@id)
• communityName (//communityConcept/name)
• aggregateOrganismObservationID (//aggregateOrganismObservation/@id)
• coverPercent (//attribute/ordinal/coverPercent)
• tag (//individualOrganism/identificationLabel)
• individualObservationID (//individualOrganismObservation/@id)
• organismX_m (//individualOrganismObservation/relativePlotPosition/relativeX)
• organismY_m (//individualOrganismObservation/relativePlotPosition/relativeY)
• height (//individualOrganismObservation/height)

However, it should be emphasized that unlike the DwC field names, many of the leaves of the VegX schema are not globally unique, making them less useful as universal column names.