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The TERN Ontology is a conceptual information model to represent plot-based ecological surveys. It defines concepts to describe sites, site visits, features of interest, observations, samplings, and samples. The TERN Ontology also provides a way to describe core and non-core attributes through an extensible framework utilising SKOS controlled vocabularies. Collection Survey collection protocols generally differ between different programs and organisations. To cater for existing and future survey collection protocols, the TERN Ontology ensures data harmonisation is possible at the core conceptual level while also capturing the intricacies of each survey collection protocol using an extensible framework with SKOS controlled vocabularies.

The collected data represented by the TERN Ontology will enable enables a standard representation of ecology ecological survey data for data integration and data . Survey data offered from multiple exchange. Different systems use the TERN Ontology to exchange survey data using standard RDF serialisations as an exchange format. The TERN Ontology is provided as a SHACL ontology to ensure incoming and outgoing data conforms to the information model.

The TERN Ontology is based on existing RDF standards and promotes Linked Data principles to enable FAIR data. Exchanging survey data between different data sources in an agreed standard will substantially improve the quality of data published by ensuring that the published data and ensure the data are represented is harmonised and interpreted correctly. The TERN Ontology enables the development of data exchange standards to exchange survey data between different systems. The promotion of Linked Data principles at its core enables the collected survey data to be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).

Status of this document

This document was prepared by TERN Data Services and Analytics as one of the deliverables to the service agreement between the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) and TERN. The contents of this document is a continuation of the previous draft report titled Data Exchange Specifications - a report to the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment - draft submittedin January of 2021. This document is published as an online evolving specification instead of the report style in the previous draft.

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