Specimen Event

Specimen Events link Specimens to Collecting Events.

Event Determiner

Agent asserting that the specimen has Event Type relationship to a collecting event (including locality, geography, geology, etc.). This person has determined coordinates and error, dates, higher geography, and everything else in the “place and time stack.”

Event Date

is the date on which the specimen was assigned to the place/time.

Event Type

See CTSPECIMEN_EVENT_TYPE

Verification Status

See CTVERIFICATIONSTATUS

Verified By

Person who set Verification Status

Verified Date

Date on which Verification Status was set

Collecting Method

is free-text describing how the specimen and the event are related. Examples:

• gill net
• hand seine
• Otter Trawl
• salvage, roadkill, DOR

Collecting Source

Collecting Source is a broad categorization of how the specimen came to be at the associated event. See CTCOLLECTING_SOURCE for values.

Habitat

is free-text describing the habitat at the place and time of the specimen event. Examples:

• limestone outcrops and ledges with dwarf shrub, sedge herbaceous tundra, scattered
• under spruce bark
• steep west-facing slopes

Remarks

Use only for data which pertains to the relationship between the specimen and the event and which is not appropriate for any more-specific fields.

Edit Form

There are two ways to edit specimen-events and associated place/time data.

1. old/normal way
   • normalized, makes managing data for shared localities easy
   • normalized, makes accidentally editing unrelated specimens easy
   • requires scary access to shared data
   • requires an in-depth understanding of the Arctos Locality Model to safely use
2. Fork-Edit method
   • denormalized - every save creates a new locality and event
     • but who cares, the cleanup scripts will renormalize the data by consolidating duplicates and purging orphans
   • requires only manage_specimens access; always creates new localities which can’t possibly be shared, so the back-end can safely run with elevated rights to create localities, collecting events, and geology determinations
   • provides a one-click path to keeping full history as unaccepted specimen-events
     • adding rather than editing is an option on every save
       • AWG: should not achiving be an option at all?
   • One-click georeferencing with GeoLocate
   • GUI georeference editing with GeoLocate
   • Provides service-derived coordinates and elevation; use them with one click

Fork-Edit method

This creates a new locality and event with every save. There are two save modes:

• edit (“Edit the current specimen_event”) should be used when changes have not affected the fundamental nature of the space-time data. Fixing a typo in a remarks field, verifying an event, making minor georeference adjustments, etc. can safely use this approach. When this option is used, the specimen-event is moved out of the “old” event and locality; it becomes detached from any history those objects may have had, and if other specimens are not using the event/locality they will be purged by the cleanup scripts.

• add (“unaccept current specimen_event; add Event with these data”) creates a new specimen event, and preserves the old. This maintains the history of the specimen being attached to now-unaccepted events, and the edit history of those events and the localities to which they are attached; it is a purely additive action. This option should be used for major or fundamental changes to the locality.

In both cases “save” clones the entire event/locality/geology stack; edits apply only to the single specimen-event being used by the single specimen. It is not possible to alter data used by any other specimen from this form.