HISCOM 2004 AGM Christchurch

The 2004 HISCOM Annual General Meeting was held in Christchurch, New Zealand from Monday 18 – Wednesday 20 October, 2004. The meeting venue was Landcare Research, Lincoln. This document represents the minutes of the meeting.

Participants

 * Bill Barker (Department of Environment and Heritage, South Australia)
 * Peter Bostock (Environmental Protection Agency, Queensland)
 * Barry Conn (Royal Botanic Gardens, New South Wales)
 * Ian Cowie (Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment, Northern Territory)
 * Peter Neish (Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, Victoria)
 * Ben Richardson (Department of Conservation and Land Management, Western Australia)
 * Larry Speers (GBIF, Denmark)
 * Greg Whitbread (Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, Australian Capital Territory)
 * Aaron Wilton (Landcare Research, New Zealand)

Introduction

 * Larry Speers was invited to present the GBIF position in the Australasian context.
 * GBIF needs publicly accessible geo-referenced gazetteers of collector’s names and numbers.
 * Donald Hobern can provide hit results back to GBIF provider institutions, and is looking for feedback on the format of this hit summary.
 * The iPlants project is looking to determine conservation status of vascular plants worldwide. Larry thinks it would be easier to choose a single family/genus worldwide that people would be happy to make public for this project.
 * The staff, time, infrastructure costs can usually be used in a GBIF funding proposal as in-kind costs.
 * GBIF very interested in repatriation of specimens. Recognises the lack of curators in European herbaria.
 * ECAT is a names-based project.
 * GBIF considers itself a phone book to local resources.
 * The conservation assessment project (iPlants) may help create a checklist of sensitive taxa/specimens to filter records at the GBIF Portal level.
 * Interested to know of any initiatives that would help at the global level.

2003 Minutes
All other actions were considered done.

Note: BRI has made its AVH Provider available. This is a great step forward, and BRI should be congratulated for its efforts.

Consensus Census
CHAH (around 2000) agreed we would move to a Consensus Census. CC is driven by AVH. Working Group involved BB, NGM and JRC. Greg Leach was added. A procedural sequence for resolving census issues was developed, in which CHAH would be involved where taxonomy could not be resolved.

HISCOM should make a recommendation about how the CC should work. HISCOM should make recommendation on how to improve the usage of APNI in the service of the CC. CC is What’s Its Name with additions. TDWG’s Taxonomic Concept Schema (TCS) will enable CC data to be interchanged between APNI and individual states.

It is currently difficult to access federal Conservation Status information.

Vernacular names are a difficult data source, including spatial, temporal and cultural components. Naturalised names are a problem. Survey teams often know more than taxonomists. What rule sets are out there that define the categories of weed? We should note that introduced/naturalised/natural name information is also a multiple component issue.

Recommendation 1
That CHAH endorse APNI as the appropriate central repository for the Consensus Census.

Recommendation 2
To streamline name/concept management, that CHAH support the development of an online interface to the Consensus Census.

Recommendation 3
That CHAH support the Consensus Census being upgraded so that multiple taxonomies may be compiled and managed online.

Action 1
That CANB expedite the provision of online access for modifying APNI and the developments approved in the recommendations above. [Greg Whitbread]

Action 2
That MEL/CANB develop an interim protocol that can be extended to other herbaria for transferring and updating state census data to APNI as a taxonomic view. [Peter Neish, report at next teleconference]

Recommendation 4
That DEH/CANB ensure federal Conservation Status information is linked to APNI to facilitate identification of rare and threatened taxa in delivery of specimen-based data from AVH pending completion of the Consensus Census.

Recommendation 5
Additions and changes to taxon circumscription should be accompanied by a Recommended Conservation Status to facilitate the communication of information to DEH and other agencies.

Issue 1
Develop rules for handling different levels of identification as well as different taxonomic concepts. When a species is identified by one herbarium to subspecies and in another only to species, this issue develops when the data is combined for AVH, and should be handled for the Consensus Census.

Recommendation 6
That there are opportunities for other client groups such as biosecurity, weed authorities, to invest in the Consensus Census as the basic source for the taxonomy of Australian plants.

Action 3
HISCOM to meet 4 times per year, 3 of which are teleconference meetings timed to occur a number of weeks prior to the CHAH teleconference to allow answers to filter to the CHAH teleconference. [HISCOM]

AVH Data Capture
Figures are not comparable across institutions.

Latest AVH data capture figures are available online.

The concept of a validated record is not agreed between states.

It is likely that only records that occur on mainland Australia or Tasmania will be included.

AVH Enhancement
Early Warning System in current design version (0.1) is too complex to be delivered within the available funds ($40,000 + extra $20,000). A revised EWS should include only “Phase 2 – Date Range change of occurrence” with the modification that the rectangles are 6 minutes square.

Recommendation 7
That CHAH note the implications of the Australian Government’s GBIF MOU giving free access to data through the public AVH interface.

Recommendation 8
That CHAH note the GBIF view that custodians cannot be bound to embargo sensitive data from another jurisdiction, but can only endeavour to do so. There is no perfect IT solution at the moment.

Action 4
For the set of CHAH-endorsed AVH fields in the first instance, determine the level to which atomisation of these fields will be necessary to ensure clean data provision to the AVH process. [Barry Conn, next teleconference]

Action 5
Attempt to parse BRI’s Full Label Text field to enable separation of locality data from the other data (i.e. habitat, habit, frequency). This process along with Action 1 should inform the Data Cleaning module of the AVH Web Enhancement project. [Ben Richardson, next teleconference]

Action 6
Place Rex Croft’s HISPID Parsing software on the MEL CVS repository. [Peter Neish]

Action 7
Document proposed changes to existing EWS Technical Design draft with a view to simplifying the solution. This should enable the project to be completed within the time frame and funding. [Greg Whitbread]

Agreement 1
That all Australian herbaria agree to implement ABCD 1.2 providers to facilitate AVH development and custodian registration with GBIF. In the absence of similar restrictions in ABCD, HISPID usage should prevail.

HISCOM-L List server problems
“Too Many Hops” errors continue to be the source of delivery problems, on HISCOM-L, HISCORE-L and CHAH-L.

Action 8
That the list server problem(s) be resolved by the first HISCOM teleconference. If it is not fixed by then, consideration of other options will be made. [Greg Whitbread]

Action 9
Find out if others can get editing access to the HISCOM web site on PlantNET. [Barry Conn]

NSW Node Portal
NSW currently no longer provides a Portal at their node. Barry asked whether this should change. It was suggested that the technical design for the Portal allowed for fewer Portals in the AVH.

GBIF Implications
No notes taken.

New Zealand linkages
CHAH is looking for closer linkages with New Zealand. NZ would be interested, although the funding would be necessary. A benefit will be access to international funding at GBIF. What questions could be answered by the public view?

Algal data for NZ might be more accessible. South Pacific initiatives, and data repatriation might be better supported by this move.

New Zealand has an extra set of platforms in use, and this must be recognised. GBIF standards avoid this issue. Caveat that NZ wait until (or help fund) the full Java redevelopment phase of AVH is completed. Caveat of involvement in the Consensus Census.

Recommendation 9
Confirm previous recommendation that an alliance with New Zealand in the AVH is broadly beneficial to both parties. Technically, the caveats noted above should be taken into consideration.

Recommendation 10
That CHAH be made aware that there may be opportunities for GBIF funding for any project making innovative use of TDWG standards.

Action 10
HISCOM resolved to have the Summary and the CSIRO Software Licence Agreement documents tabled at CHAH. [Ben Richardson, completed]

Recommendation 11
That CHAH be aware that their incorporation is useful so that open source software licences can be attached to a formal body.

Action 11
All HISCOM members to show their CHAH head and interested staff the draft version of APNI’s XML output to web pages. The context is that we are trying to sell APNI as a tool for building state censuses. [HISCOM, next teleconference]

Go to http://www.anbg.gov.au/pkey/ and use “&xml-stylesheet=none” on the end of a search URL to see raw XML, which (for example) might be used dynamically to pull descriptions into a state census.