geography request - Mediterranean Sea

[Jegelewicz]

Explain what geography needs created.

Explain in sufficient detail for us to locate standardized spatial data. For GADM-based data, a country is usually sufficient and appropriate. Please request distinct countries in distinct issues. We will respond with a CSV template and instructions for proceeding, or a request more information if necessary.

Mediterranean Sea which is an IHO Sea Area - https://www.marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=details&id=1905

We have a lot of subsections of Mediterranean Sea, but not the whole. This is needed for an incoming collection.

If the above does not seem correct, usable, or ideal, please open a request for information Issue (you may use this template). We are happy to discuss specifics or alternates; please bring any potential concerns or problems to our attention before assembling data or requesting that we do so.

[dustymc]

1. I'm about 92% sure that wasn't in the "authority" we adopted, but I also can't quite nail down what that was - my notes just say https://iho.int/ and I can no longer find any spatial data there. It would be great if we could better define the Standard.

2. EDIT repulled World_Seas_IHO_v3, no wires crossed this time, it does not in fact contain a standalone Mediterranean.

arctosprod@arctos>> select
arctos-> name
arctos-> from
arctos-> temp_worldseas
arctos-> order by name
arctos-> ;
                            name                             
-------------------------------------------------------------
 Adriatic Sea
 Aegean Sea
 Alboran Sea
 Andaman or Burma Sea
 Arabian Sea
 Arafura Sea
 Arctic Ocean
 Baffin Bay
 Balearic (Iberian Sea)
 Bali Sea
 Baltic Sea
 Banda Sea
 Barentsz Sea
 Bass Strait
 Bay of Bengal
 Bay of Biscay
 Bay of Fundy
 Beaufort Sea
 Bering Sea
 Bismarck Sea
 Black Sea
 Bristol Channel
 Caribbean Sea
 Celebes Sea
 Celtic Sea
 Ceram Sea
 Chukchi Sea
 Coral Sea
 Davis Strait
 Eastern China Sea
 East Siberian Sea
 English Channel
 Flores Sea
 Great Australian Bight
 Greenland Sea
 Gulf of Aden
 Gulf of Alaska
 Gulf of Aqaba
 Gulf of Boni
 Gulf of Bothnia
 Gulf of California
 Gulf of Finland
 Gulf of Guinea
 Gulf of Mexico
 Gulf of Oman
 Gulf of Riga
 Gulf of St. Lawrence
 Gulf of Suez
 Gulf of Thailand
 Gulf of Tomini
 Halmahera Sea
 Hudson Bay
 Hudson Strait
 Indian Ocean
 Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland
 Ionian Sea
 Irish Sea and St. George's Channel
 Japan Sea
 Java Sea
 Kara Sea
 Kattegat
 Labrador Sea
 Laccadive Sea
 Laptev Sea
 Ligurian Sea
 Lincoln Sea
 Makassar Strait
 Malacca Strait
 Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin
 Mediterranean Sea - Western Basin
 Molukka Sea
 Mozambique Channel
 North Atlantic Ocean
 North Pacific Ocean
 North Sea
 Norwegian Sea
 Persian Gulf
 Philippine Sea
 Red Sea
 Rio de La Plata
 Savu Sea
 Sea of Azov
 Sea of Marmara
 Sea of Okhotsk
 Seto Naikai or Inland Sea
 Singapore Strait
 Skagerrak
 Solomon Sea
 South Atlantic Ocean
 South China Sea
 Southern Ocean
 South Pacific Ocean
 Strait of Gibraltar
 Sulu Sea
 Tasman Sea
 The Coastal Waters of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia
 The Northwestern Passages
 Timor Sea
 Tyrrhenian Sea
 White Sea
 Yellow Sea
(101 rows)

[Jegelewicz]

I don't know why we picked IHO, but it seems super limited. https://www.marineregions.org/gazetteer.php is much better populated and includes all of the IHO geography listed above.

IHO is so weird - why no Gulf of Maine, but includes Bay of Fundy which is also in Marineregions.org. It is weird because Bay of Fundy is just a portion of Gulf of Maine as our Geography makes clear Gulf of Maine, Bay of Fundy. For marine collections, more options and a little more granularity in higher geography would be nice and in some cases a little less too "Mediterranean Sea".

@sharpphyl @genevieve-anderegg @kmkocot @happiah-madson @falco-rk any thoughts on this?

[Jegelewicz]

I'd also like to bemoan the way the marine stuff is named. There is no hierarchy, so we have

South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand Pacific Ocean, South China Sea

BUT IHO doesn't include Pacific Ocean, so I would expect

North Pacific Ocean, South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand North Pacific Ocean, South China Sea

Also stuff like

Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico North Atlantic Ocean North Atlantic Ocean, Greenland Sea

BUT IHO doesn't have "Atlantic Ocean"

so I would expect

North Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico North Atlantic Ocean North Atlantic Ocean, Greenland Sea

Can we figure out a way to make these more consistent? It is maddening trying to find marine higher geography matches.

[dustymc]

Can we figure out a way to make these more consistent?

Some/all of that's probably me learning how this can work and how it can be integrated with our legacy data. The answer became clear somewhere through GADM: faithfully follow the Standard or make giant messes. I'll open an Issue.

[sharpphyl]

I would prefer to use https://marineregions.org/ instead of (or in addition to) IHO. It would be helpful to see a list of exactly how their data compare. Marine regions offers EEZs which would be helpful for just offshore localities. Additionally, it is the source for OBIS distribution maps.

As to what oceans should be in higher geography, Marine Regions seems to go with North Atlantic etc. rather than Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. https://marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=image&pic=119334. That is an issue for us only when we only have the larger ocean as the locality so there's nothing in higher geography.

[dustymc]

super limited

That's kinda how Standards work - they never seem to do quite what anyone wishes they did, but they're still the only effective way to communicate outside of tiny little groups.

https://xkcd.com/927/

I'm pretty confident in saying that marineregions.org can't serve as a standard - it contains eg https://marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=details&id=64226, that ain't geography.

Some subset of marineregions.org might be suitable, if it turns out to be useful and available and stable and all that jazz. The closest I can find to eezs is "PlaceType | Territorial Sea" eg https://marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=details&id=49147

I was able to pull MarineRegions:eez_12nm from there, but it was just MX - I suspect I'd need GIS support (https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/5597 would be nice...) if this somehow turns into reality. (First question would be whether the Territorial Sea data is EEZs or if I just picked a bad example.)

That is an issue for us only when we only have the larger ocean as the locality so there's nothing in higher geography.

I think that might be often overlooked (and it's clearly the solution to "someone insists on doing something outside the Standard") - just use https://arctos.database.museum/place.cfm?action=detail&geog_auth_rec_id=10016350 for geography and maybe something like https://arctos.database.museum/info/ctDocumentation.cfm?table=ctlocality_attribute_type#previous_geography if some sort of semi-formal assertion is somehow useful. If there are decent coordinates then it's easy to dynamically put the place into ANY spatial system, and if there's not then none of this can carry much weight anyway - picking a correct-but-not-great geography doesn't eliminate any magic.

[Jegelewicz]

I agree that all of the things in marineregions.org are not geography, but there are things that could be

Gulf of Maine {Mediterranean Sea}(https://www.marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=details&id=1905) - which the gazeteer says is from IHO....

Bahamas Exclusive Economic Zone

Maybe we just need to be more flexible with marine geography and allow more than just IHO, which seems a bit too limited. We could set rules about what can be used from marineregions.org if that will help to eliminate stuff that is just too small or weird to be geography

You can search by place type = EEZ

I also think the Freshwater Ecoregions of the world would be nice spacial features to to include. Just day dreaming...

[genevieve-anderegg]

Should we put another Geography committee meeting on the calendar to discuss?

[dustymc]

flexible

Pretty sure that's just "don't follow the Standard" and should terrify anyone who remembers where we came from!

Geography committee meeting

Seems reasonable. I think the goal would be to identify some subset of the data and nominate it for assertable geography, https://handbook.arctosdb.org/documentation/higher-geography.html. (And maybe discuss the functional implications of overlaps with other "authorities" if that turns out to be the proposal - I just can't deal with that at the moment.) Would be useful to invite (or maybe pre-coordinate with) @mkoo - doesn't matter how spiffy the idea is if we can't make it work (and downloading hundreds of shapes individually is probably not workable).

Freshwater Ecoregions of the world

Is someone trying to assert that, or ???????

The bar for Features is much lower - but there are also infrastructure limitations at the moment, https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/5597 could use a champion (and should make just sucking everything from https://www.marineregions.org into Features trivial).

[Jegelewicz]

Is someone trying to assert that,

No - but it would make for cool searches

[genevieve-anderegg]

Should we put another geography committee meeting on the calendar? @dustymc @Jegelewicz @mkoo

[genevieve-anderegg]

The bar for Features is much lower - but there are also infrastructure limitations at the moment, https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/5597 could use a champion (and should make just sucking everything from https://www.marineregions.org/ into Features trivial).

Marine Regions just released some new boundaries and updated others: https://www.marineregions.org/files/newsletter_v12.htm

I'll put this issue on the Geography agenda for next week so we can discuss 1) if and how to add data from Marine Regions and other sources of geography that aren't GADM, 2) the current status of Features for geography, and 3) procedures and workflows related to all of this.

[dustymc]

sources of geography that aren't GADM

For the sake of completeness, the current model was born that way - https://handbook.arctosdb.org/documentation/higher-geography.html#iho-world-seas

Adding more sources is a social issue (excepting the below). (And FWIW I'll probably oppose anything that looks like a pile of arbitrariness and support anything that acts like a Standard.)

current status of Features for geography,

https://handbook.arctosdb.org/documentation/higher-geography.html#unassertable-higher-geography - ?? what's not clear?

3) procedures and workflows

https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/6521#issuecomment-1751489551 is my request for help. (Options seem to include getting TACC to fix whatever's preventing me from doing something I've previously done literally thousands of times, or finding some way to implement something like https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/5597.)

[genevieve-anderegg]

Bear with me as I read up and reacquaint myself with where we're at on all the different issues and discussions around Geography in Arctos as I prepare for our first meeting on Monday!

Adding more sources is a social issue

And perfect discussion material for our committee! If we want to include data from an outside source that appears as a pile of arbitrariness, we'll have to discuss what we want to select from that pile (and what is not useful).

?? what's not clear?

Nothing, just saying we'll have to discuss if there's other things/shapes from other sources we want to make a FFF

https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/6521#issuecomment-1751489551 is my request for help. (Options seem to include getting TACC to fix whatever's preventing me from doing something I've previously done literally thousands of times, or finding some way to implement something like https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/5597.)

Ah I see I see. I'll add this to the agenda so we can talk about it. #5597 would be fantastic