[Nhcoll-l] Lack of latitude and longitude

[Leslie L Skibinski]

Out of an abundance of caution, we made the decision approximately 8 years ago to truncate (not round) our coordinates to a tenth of a degree and give them a standard (5566 meter)  error radius.  We made this decision after some horror stories of fossil collectors using a museums published coordinates to enter private property to collect fossils without the landowners permission.

We clearly state what we have done with our coordinates in our uploads to data aggregators and in our online database.  We also indicate that more data may be available.  For Darwin Core reasons, we do try to assign coordinates to all our localities but know that this cannot be done for some of our specimens, especially things that only have a country, state or ocean designation.

Leslie L. Skibinski
Collection Manager

Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca, New York  14850
Phone:  (607) 273-6623  ext. 128
Fax:  (607) 273-6620

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Douglas Yanega
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2024 12:41 PM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Lack of latitude and longitude


Assignment of arbitrary points is a balancing act.

It is a recommended practice (e.g., in the Darwin Core protocols) that every specimen-level database record with a georeference should include an uncertainty radius. There are lots of collections, ours included, that follow this standard.

The problem is that not everyone who USES specimen data makes use of this "error radius" information. As tempting as it is to say "Well, it's not our fault if people abuse our data", it does nonetheless represent a real concern, such that we might NOT want to put specimen data online if the error radius is exceptionally large.

The use of centroids, common as it is, can have serious repercussions when dealing with assessments for T&E taxa. In my own experience, the datasets for various bumblebees are "contaminated" with so many such points that it has created problems, where very rare and geographically-limited species are mapping over much larger geographic areas than are realistic. This can keep a species in actual need of protection from BEING protected, and cause wasted resources when a species DOES get listed, and people spend millions of dollars doing surveys for the species in places where they have never occurred.

The responsibility here is shared, ultimately, between data providers and data consumers. Providers shouldn't assume that all users will know to check for big error radii, and consumers shouldn't assume that the error radius is always zero. Sometimes, even though you might want to have a data point in your database, you either shouldn't assign one, or - if you do - you shouldn't share it online. Not to prolong or extend the discussion, but a similar issue occurs with respect to non-native plants or animals raised in gardens or quarantine facilities; if they are given a georeference for their "novel" location, this is very open to misinterpretation. We have thousands of record in our database of this nature, as we maintain a major insectary/quarantine facility, with thousands of voucher specimens, but those data are not put online unless the data being displayed are for the point of origin.

Peace,

--

Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum

Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     office:951-827-8704

FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)

             https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html

  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness

        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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