The details about a biological survey (how it was carried out, the spatio-temporal scope, the taxonomic groups targeted, who was involved, etc.) are important to properly understand the structure of the survey and how the published data can be reused. The Humboldt Extension for Ecological Inventories (HE), a vocabulary extension to the Darwin Core (DwC) Event Class, provides a means by which to explicitly report the context in which species occurrence data and/or material specimens were collected. The extension includes 55 terms to capture critical facets of survey design including protocol, scope, and sampling effort in a structured manner, thus enhancing overall FAIRness (specifically findability and interoperability) of biological survey data.
This document will guide GBIF data publishers who (a) already have data formatted as a Darwin Core (DwC) Event dataset through the process of updating their dataset with the Humboldt extension or (b) are comfortable with the DwC Event core and wish to map a new dataset to DwC Event class and Humboldt extension terms.