Converting to Darwin Core

October 15, 2026

I've decided to convert my snail research collection data to Darwin Core.  I'll be adding a google sheet which I can use offline as well. I began by using Google Earth back in 2010, because mapping was my primary focus. Now I need to be "data" focused and export it to whatever mapping or GIS software and reports are needed.  DWC was developed starting in 2014, and I began in 2010, so I absolve myself of my earlier lack of adherence to standard as well as habits when I began recording locality data in the late 1980s.

The added benefit is I can help clear up historical collecting data within gbif.org while integrating my own and the data will be combined and available to all.  That also means rather than individually updating worksheets, I will be able to update just one and then share it with others because they can leverage that directly using a standard, rather than cobble things together in a haphazard way, which seems to be my modus operandi.

I am watching the Darwin Core Working Group on GitHub here:

https://github.com/tdwg/dwc-qa

https://github.com/tdwg/dwc

https://dwc.tdwg.org/simple/

Negative Detection Data

I intend to contribute to, possibly impose, standards for negative detection data for targetted species in the Darwin Core data classes.

Part of my thoughts are better encapsulated in this short blurb, extracted and edited from below:

We have a very narrow window of opportunity in history to inventory biodiversity before it quite frankly is too late. The climate has always been in flux, but now human activity is global in reach and we count in the billions. Historians will harshly judge our generation. Coupled with the chaos due to human activity, environmental change patterns will alter in ways we will not understand at first. How will species be affected at the landscape scale?

The timeframe is narrow because there is limited time to do the work. We have the technology to acquire vast amounts of information in a near instantaneous amount of time that would have taken centuries, if at all, in the past. Synchronous information is possible, and we need to be thorough. Where are the species now, where could they be, and where were they. All we have in the databases is a fraction of the information needed to do a passing job. I find it shameful that so called negative data gets a knee-jerk negative reaction. It must be kept as part of the picture; it is incumbent upon us to collect and preserve this information, not toss it aside and treat it blithely as so-called junk DNA. Nature holds onto her secrets, and we are not prescient.

I wrote, defended, and refined a lengthy diatribe of such at iNaturalist. The feedback was informative. You can read the thread here:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/my-not-at-all-controversial-thought-on-negative-data/86649

Started on October 10th, 2026

This opening part is meant to get you guys into an agreeable state of mind, so when I hit you with what I want, I’ve primed you to say yes. Fair warning. I write in a conversational manner which can feel visceral at times. I’ve taken a bit of liberty here and there as well. Maybe this is a veiled cry for attention.

I am spoiled. I was lucky enough to start horsing around with iNaturalist when it began; I was privileged to be able to chat with Scott @laorie who would politely tell me what I wanted at the time was out of scope, and we would laugh around the campfire and life was good, and I would go back to reading my arcane books on desert snails, banana slugs, archaic lineages of amphibians, ferns, moss, lichens, desert varnish and so on.

Then I took a mental vacation for about 10 years, and the fire-in-the-belly re-ignited, and here I am, and HAHA, the laugh is on you guys, because it crept into scope, now I see how part of the change was implemented but it still isn’t enough. I am not a politician, I get how big things sometimes take time to integrate to buy support from others. Well if we all waited around all reasonable like that, then revolution would not be necessary, and we wouldn’t have human rights as we know and expect them to be. Sometimes you have to fight.

If you got this far, here is the meat and potatoes:

Negative observations are data. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Yes and no. Why record that one did not see something? Isn’t it enough to be “positive” and focus on what you did see, shut up and take your photo, and move on.

If you haven’t studied conservation, you owe it to yourself and to the discipline of conservation to study the work of Joe Grinnell and frontier biologists in the US, including Muir. The entirety of the conservation movement in the US, and abroad (including European institutions) rests upon their work and philosophy, and other individuals who carefully inventoried all species they encountered. Regardless of their methods, it is data.

We have a very narrow window of opportunity in history to inventory biodiversity. It is narrow because there is limited time to do the work. We have the technology to acquire vast information in a near instantaneous amount of time that would have taken centuries, if at all, in the past. Synchronous information.

Raise your hand that when you go to a place, looking for a species, and you don’t see it, that makes you ponder, possibly in concern because you are following up on another observation, or you are a research biologist studying a species or ecosystem and your study subjects are starting to not provide evidence of presence.

Are they absent?

If people re-visit a location over time, then that lack of evidence becomes statistical in nature.

The reason why the work of Joe Grinnell and other systematists of the past are important, is that you know with certainty that the california grizzly bear once roamed through the Santa Cruz peninsula and throughout the bay area only 200 years ago, and now it doesn’t. Is it absent? If we follow the logic of “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, I hope you see how absurd that sounds. Salmon ran thick in the streams all over the coastline within the last 100 years, and now they are absent from 99% of the waterways except the largest rivers and streams. If a salmon is not seen after a few years in a stream, is it absent? If you haven’t seen it, then that is meaningful.

If you go to a place with the intention of observing a species, and it isn’t there, and you repeat the same visit, and others have the same experience, that is a RED FLAG, and I think it’s a pity that inaturalist, with its incredible success and world-class army of field biologists and users has no means of pointing things like that out.

The only thing we can do right now is collate the positive observations and plot them over time to see where the species has been observed. That presents biases: Perhaps the species is no longer in the forefront of the publics mind; its not a sexy species. Perhaps people have forgotten that the species was present and now its not and people assume it has always been that way. That is what needs to be fixed.

Refinement posted on October 12, 2026

I refer only to explicit observations; they are based on iNaturalist “evidence of presence” that are community accepted criteria. The gold standard being the living organism. This is iNaturalist now:

“Observer123 made Observation123 of Species123 at geocoordinates and datetime, presenting with photographic evidence that shows evidence of presence in the form of the organism.”

I assert that there is a gap, and iNaturalist as a platform has an opportunity to fill out its potential and embrace a fuller picture of what a naturalist does. It will be inclusive of what naturalists do, and the site will benefit from that inclusiveness. The data itself is gradable using already built-in processes.

The opportunity for improvement is to include the negative observation; the inverse which I propose reads “absence of prior evidence”. To establish this level of assertion, the observer would have to communicate that they made a concerted effort to observe all forms of community accepted evidence of presence criteria appropriate for that taxon. It is gradable based on its completeness.

The parent observation would also have to be either shared with an iNaturalist, open geocoordinates, or some level of functionality through an existing project framework.

“Observer456, following up on Observation123, did not detect Species123 at geocoordinates and radius provided by parent Observation123. This Observation456 is a descendant of parent Observation123.”

It has to be understood from the outset, that a negative observation is only as good as the observer’s skill, their dedication, the environmental conditions, the likelihood of activity/emergence by the organism. At some point, it becomes a statistical probability of something, and a matter of interest and a matter of scientific intrigue.

A negative observation would still require some form of evidence that a visit to the Observation geocoordinates (and within its radius) to be valid, since it is a follow-up to a particular Observation; a photo of area or habitat, habitat loss, locality conditions.