sharpphyl
commented
4 years ago We definitely need input from Andres Lopez at UAM and @anna-chinn and @dperriguey at UNM. But it may impact other collections that have a few seals or shore or sea birds etc. even though that's a small part of their collection, so the whole AWG probably needs to weigh in.
Can you tell me more about WKTs? I can't find anything in the Handbook. How are they created? Where does the media ID come from? Do we create them or are they standard for all users? Are they available for all countries?
Why do the US WKTs seem to include a few miles of ocean within the WKT boundary but the ones from South Africa don't.
As a result, my US specimens that are just outside the land boundaries for Florida, California etc. don't create an annotation but the South African ones do. Having just those few miles in the ocean makes a huge different in the number of annotations created and doesn't require a new higher geography system until the specimen localities is significantly further off shore.
And why does the one that Dusty referenced for San Diego county in your email not look like the one with my specimen records?
I'm quite interested in both the EEZ concept. Is there anyway that the coastal WKTs could be modified to include the EEZ?
Also of interest is MarineRegions.org (http://www.marineregions.org/about.php). Using a vetted external source would help with consistency within Arctos and beyond. Does anyone have more knowledge about these two sources?
If we could avoid having to create all new higher geography (by starting with the Ocean vs. the Continent) it would be much less work, but it needs to be a good permanent solution.
Another idea is to create polygons (WKTs?) for specific marine localities. But we have never been successful in creating polygons with the geolocation tools (despite a comment that it can be done in the Handbook). Is there any way that a locality WKT could override a "higher geography" WKT (if it's just an extension into the water) or does that just cause more confusion?
I have reached out to other collections managers who are well positioned in the marine invertebrate community to see if there is any action being taken that we should know about.
dustymc
mkoo
Jegelewicz
As we move to WKT defined Higher Geography (eg. North America, United States, California, Monterey County) we are finding that records falling offshore are not included (for good reason).
How we create appropriate higher geography for marine, aquatic, offshore localities needs to be decided.
Discussion points from #1107 : -What about including EEZ zones for each coastal county or state? There could be WKTs for that which could replace or complement the existing terrestrial counties. EEZ = Economic Exclusion Zones dictate where you are fishing and which jurisdiction you fall under. We have used this to georeference fish and marine collections in the past.
we would create new HG that are appropriate for the localities-- if county is included then the HG would be specific to the county. yeah we are going to have to carve up the entire planet into wkts and HG. Overlap is inevitable and maybe not that terrible.
-Attaching shapes to geography removes the ambiguities. "Pacific Ocean" can start where the sand gets wet, or {pick a number} miles offshore, or WHATEVER, and I can immediately tell if a specimen is within that shape or not.
Overlap is inevitable and maybe not that terrible.
Agreed, especially WRT precision - "Yellowstone" laps three states and a bunch of counties, and you might know any of that (or not) for any specimen. It's not ideal, but we're stuck with it. At the same time we should respect "real" boundaries when they exist. As far as I can tell there's a hard border around San Diego County, and it looks like this:
Screen Shot 2019-11-15 at 1 52 05 PM
Something a mile offshore could arguably in California, Pacific Ocean, various finer-scaled marine-things we might add, etc., but it cannot justifiably be in San Diego County.
-what do marine collections think makes sense? Need input!