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Iowarth View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Iowarth Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2012 at 8:38pm

I can answer your point Suzy.

As you will appreciate, NBN has little, if any directly entered data. Much of the rare herp data, for example, is direct data dumps from the ARC database. One of the inevitable results of this is that it is perpetually out of date.

Similarly, right from the initial design stages of the Record Pool, it has been envisaged that it also would provide data to the NBN Gateway. In terms of usage by those allowed to bore down to fine detail it is likely that, in the fullness of time, the Record Pool will be more up to date, comprehensive and accurate than the NBN gateway at the same point in time.

Chris

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Iowarth Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2012 at 8:40pm

Gemma - what you want to do sounds rather like NARRS - simply a presence/absence survey within kilometre squares.

Chris

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2012 at 9:51pm
It could be Chris, not sure though! 

Certainly I had got to the point of only submitting data that would fill 1km squares to county recorders in the past. Though I can figure out from a 1km square record where the site would be easily most of the time.

I think my reservation are all pinned around the concept of visual mapping. It doesn't matter how big the icon is if it is centered around a record or overlaps it can give the location away.

I need to play with it all and see if I can come up with anything useful.

Jon really had it with the long term monitoring sites. I'm really paranoid about them because they have refuges down and my current system practically maps the refuge location as the sampling points. Lets face it with a personality like mine the little guys are the only friends I have so I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to them. LOL Seriously though it could really mess things up for me if the people I work with thought there was collection from the sites and the refuges contributed to it.

I think a system that just showed a bar chart to the end user of likelihood of species encounter based on current records for a given search area would solve nearly all of my reservations regarding submitting records. So an icon appears on the record pool near but not overlapping the site, detailing species and relative abundance at the monitoring site. Anyone who really really needed to know more could perhaps request the restriction removed at several different levels of detail?

Add to that it could be flagged as 'stable' 'declining' 'increasing' and further qualified as reason - sympathetic management, unsympathetic management, lack of management etc. If that was dynamic and updated each year it would be a lot more useful than a dot on a map.



Edited by GemmaJF - 01 Oct 2012 at 10:02pm
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Robert V View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Robert V Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2012 at 9:51pm

I am so glad I never patched into the site a few hours ago and saw Jon's expanded and detailed illustrations of just what exists (probably now just used to exist) in EF.

My God, what has the world become when every little detail from Kate's t*ts to the last pair of mating Adders in Epping Forest is plastered all over the net. I despair I kid you not.

What such recording can possibly do to benefit UK herps is beyond me I'm afraid.

Just another nail in the coffin etc.

Instead of publishing such maps, why don't you all just collect up all the herps and sell them at the side of the road from stalls so that they can either be caged, dumped, mutilated or splattered?

Good luck with it all... like I said Chris, I'm keeping sctum, and the only thing to suffer from that, unfortunately, is this excellent web site - rauk.

See you

R

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2012 at 10:44pm
It really wasn't up for very long Rob, Jon had a little oops moment but removed it pretty quickly. I would much rather you stayed btw and helped to figure out how to actually make things work! BTW if you want to come and help out at two Essex sites I have next year with tons of grass snakes and sympathetic managers (I mean the guys actually love herps) please let me know!

OK, so this is what I would like to see, just an icon you then click it and get something like:


SPECIES

Source – GJF Monitoring Site

Site Status

 

Likelihood of encounter

ADDER

Not recorded but word of mouth reports in local area subject to further survey and extension of survey

Un-established

 


Considered  by recorder to be likely low density population and presence at nearby sites

GRASS SNAKE

Large localised population

Stable

Sympathetic Management

High

SLOW WORM

Remnant population recorded

Increasing

Sympathetic

Management

Medium

May be remaining patchy local distribution some sites may still hold localised high numbers

VIVIPAROUS LIZARD

Not recorded

Absent

 

Low



That provides a ton of information rather than just putting a dot on a map that gives away the location of the site? The icon could hover around the area but specifically not be centered on it or overlap the actual site.


Edited by GemmaJF - 01 Oct 2012 at 11:27pm
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Iowarth View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Iowarth Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2012 at 10:58pm

Hi Gemma

Re "It doesn't matter how big the icon is if it is centered around a record", I agree and regard this as a bigger give away than simply overlaps.

As an example in Sliding Scales and Add an Adder the visual maps that the public can see cheat quite considerably. For obvious reasons I am not going to say precisely how - simply that the algorithm that drives the squares on the maps does not centre on the record. I admit that it does contain it - but where in it is a different kettle of fish - and is variable!

So far as your later post is concerned I need to think about this - a difficult task at the best of times!!

All the best

Chris

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2012 at 11:11pm
Hi Chris I took a good look a Sliding Scales and Add an Adder.

I spotted one square on Add an Adder in an area that I know really well and was thinking where the hell is that then lol! So that is working well! (Unless it wasn't actually an adder, as I still can't figure the site location!).

I think my idea of the information box addresses a lot. ARG members can get a feel for the area (perhaps they'll volunteer to do one of the adjacent sites and find the **^^% adder everyone keeps telling me are there!). 

It could also act as a system for ARGs to give a nod to a consultant regarding a possible suitable receptor site for Zv? (Subject to consultation of course with the recorder and land manager and the purchase of a very nice meadow adjacent to the site which I would love the land manager to have control over). Far better then the animals being moved out of the county because there are no suitable sites in Essex Wink

And yet it gives away absolutely nothing specific about the site at all.


Edited by GemmaJF - 01 Oct 2012 at 11:21pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote herpetologic2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Oct 2012 at 10:09am
Which email should I use then Gemma?

I can set up an admin log in for you so you can have a play on the system as other people are doing with maps. (Don't worry the maps are not live on the internet)

We can also restrict access to data to say a person's log in so no other admin manager can see your data (I think).

I am looking at making sure that people who record in an area - county can see the records for that county plus the neighbouring counties.

J
Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://arguk.org/recording
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote herpetologic2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Oct 2012 at 10:16am
Ah now that is looking like a good way forward. Gemma - would some of the individuals in EARG be able to help with your grass snake sites?

Will be back as I need to pop down to a railway with sand lizards.....
Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://arguk.org/recording
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Oct 2012 at 12:55pm
Use the aol email Jon as given on the EFC site.

I guess what I see about all this works like this:

When I started recording I was told a record was only any good if it contained, time, location, date, recorder, air temperature, etc etc. 

That information is fine to collect.

We now have computers which make it possible to quickly move data

And GPS to give 10 figure grid references.

And ways of quickly and easily showing all that information visually.

Now that is all OK, but that is a lot of detail. Dumping that all on a visual map then needs interpretation. 

Lots of things can happen. all that information can easily and quickly fall into the wrong hands.

Anyone looking at it can be swamped with the detail, the more detail the less any of it actually means.

Now if it is just a casual record one can't say a lot about it, fair enough add it to a database as it is with all the detail.

If though you have piles of records in detail, what is the point? Analyse your results and submit a summary without giving away any of the exact details. That works for me and I'll sleep better at night.

If someone wants all that detail I do have it on my own computer if needed.

I wonder if the record pool could be developed to show a similar summary for bulk records submitted? So if one has lots of records for a site in the database no point showing all of them on the map unless someone specifically needs all that detail. What would be better is a summarised overview.

I'm happy to start off providing just summaries of my monitoring sites, what would be very good though would be a system where these could actually be generated on the map from submitted raw data, but the details of the raw the data 'locked' out unless that detail is really needed. 

Jon, I would rather ARG members got involved with surveying new sites rather than the current monitoring sites if possible. 
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