Plot-X working notes

Transects

In ecological plot-based surveys, majority of the raw data collected are usually along transect. A transect would be modelled as a sampling feature when strictly following O&M’s vocabulary.

feature which is involved in making observations concerning a domain feature

The O&M standard provides examples of sampling features such as: station, transect, section or specimen.

In ecology, most of the plot-based survey protocols employ transects to make measurements that are representative of the whole site. In most cases, more than at least 50% of the data collected are on domain features along transects. To make Plot-X easier to understand for its users, it has been decided to only have ecological things such as land surface, plant individual, plant specimen or plant community as domain features. A transect is a related entity, but it is never a domain feature. It is hoped that this way, users won’t mistakenly identify the proximate feature of interest for their data as transect and instead choose something that’s more suitable in the domain features controlled vocabulary.

Types of domain features observed and measured along transects

Plant individual - shrubs, trees, etc.
Land surface - the surface layer of the ground, observations include ground cover and others

Stratum observations

O&M has no simple way in the observation model to denote multiple features of interest. The observation model only allows pointing to the proximate feature of interest. In some vegetation observations such as crown cover, the proximate feature of interest is either the plant individual or the plant population, qualified by the stratum. For example, in CORVEG, the crown cover data in the SITE_STRATA table provides crown cover average measurements on a plant population at a particular stratum. In this situation, there are two ways to model this:

The proximate feature of interest is the plant population with an attribute on the plant population to qualify its stratum.
The proximate feature of interest is the stratum with no relation to its related feature of interest, the plant individual or plant population.

Naturally, I’d go with option 1 to represent the feature of interest (plant individual or plant population) in a much cleaner way. However, Guru on 23/04/2021 wants us to model the feature of interest of these types of observations as the stratum. If we do model it as the stratum, we will have to figure out how to represent the related feature of interest, the plant individual or plant population in the CSV implementation in a nice way.