Manage data about sensitive localities

This page contains general information about community practices for managing data about sensitive localities, and also aggregates links to additional resources with more specific information.

Content is actively being developed for this page by members of PDWGPaleo Data Working Group. Community of practice centered around collections-based paleo and informatics professionals. Please contact us via the #knowledge-hub channel in our Slack workspace if you are interested in contributing.

Specific localityGeographic place where a specimen was collected; fossils often being connected to stratigraphic units. information may be restricted for some or all paleontological specimens due to federal regulations as well as the preferences of private landowners.

If coordinates need to be shared with less precision than the data available

Information should be truncated
- Do not round or randomize numbers
The recommendation is to truncate to a tenth of a degree equivalent
- Similar to being as specific as a city name
Remove any other descriptive locality information that would compromise the more specific location

If any locality data is restricted, data providers using Darwin CoreBiodiversity data standard maintained by TDWG, with terms for sharing species occurrence and specimen data. should follow the instructions below for each Darwin Core term:

informationWithheld - Explanation of restriction can be included here. Examples: “More data may be available” or “Locality description is available to researchers upon request.”
dataGeneralizations - Essential term to include if an institution does not serve the most specific decimal latitude/longitude available for a specimen. Example: “Latitude and longitude reported at maximum precision of 0.1 degrees.”

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