Geoschemes Terrestrial Domain Task Group

Convenor

• Francisco Pando - Real Jardín Botánico-CSIC, Madrid, Spain

Core members

• Gloria Martinez-Sagarra - GBIF-ES, Madrid, Spain
• Lourdes Rollón -Consultant, Madrid, Spain
• Visotheary Ung - ISYEB, CNRS/Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France

Motivation

This task group is established within the Geoschemes interest group (See https://www.tdwg.org/community/geoschemes/) in order to concretize the goals and objectives of the IG “Geoschemes”: To update the WGSRPD 2 (World Geographic Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions Brummitt et al., 2001, https://github.com/tdwg/wgsrpd/tree/master ).

Despite the increasing prevalence of georeferenced species occurrence data, an area-based scheme to present, retrieve, and communicate species’ spatial distribution and associated information remains relevant and needed. The approach of WGSRPD, combining administrative limits and biogeographical concepts in a hierarchical scheme, has been a success, as the hundreds of papers citing this standard prove. And its utility is not diminishing; since just 2022, Google Scholar has identified 97 papers that cite the WGSRPD. Hotspots mapping, global traits patterns, invasive species, assessing extinction risk, global pollination patterns, and biogeographic patterns are just a few of the areas using the standard.

Thus, the underlying principle of combining administrative limits and biogeographical concepts in a hierarchical scheme is maintained, whereas we aim for expanding the coverage to marine areas, and including in its scope not only plants but all taxonomic groups. This task group is focused on the terrestrial domain, but we work closely with its sibling Task Group “Geoschemes: Marine Domain”, to produce a coherent system of global coverage.

Strategy

Within the sphere of the GeoSchemes interest group, the WGSRPD 2 units have been reviewed, and feedback gathered for non-straightforward cases using the GitHub Issues System. In this way 22 cases were identified and presented. Updated tables created for units levels 1,2,3 and 4, plus an additional “Changes table”, following the same approach and nomenclature used in WGSRPD 2. These can be found at: https://github.com/tdwg/geoschemes/tree/main/terrestrial

Goals, Outputs and Outcomes

To produce standard documentation in SDS form, as TDWG procedures require. Worth noting here that for WGSRPD 2 units’ full names followed The Times Atlas of the World, ed. 8. 1990. In this iteration, we aim to provide alternative vernacular names.

Identify and aim to provide ancillary materials to make this standard usable and useful, these may include maps, references, etc.

Becoming involved

Please email the convener to express your interest in participating. Please describe your affiliation(s) and any relevant skills or resources you can bring to the effort.
The task group intends to conduct written exchanges via the TDWG workspace in Slack (Geoschemes) and email, and to reflect advances, issues and current state of work through its GitHub section

References

• Brummitt, R.K., Pando, F., Hollis, S., Brummitt, N.A. (2001). World geographical scheme for recording plant distributions. Edit. 2. TDWG Standard no2. Pittsburg (PA, USA): Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University. https://web.archive.org/web/20160125135239/http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/tdwg/TDWG_geo2.pdf
• Hollis, S. & R.K. Brummitt. 1992. World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. TDWG Standard no2. Pittsburgh (PA, USA): Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University.