Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36374834›Full record

ArticlePloS one2022

Geographic name resolution service: A tool for the standardization and indexing of world political division names, with applications to species distribution modeling.

Bradley L Boyle, Brian S Maitner, George G C Barbosa, Rohith K Sajja, Xiao Feng, Cory Merow, Erica A Newman, Daniel S Park, Patrick R Roehrdanz, Brian J Enquist

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Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

10 authors.

Bradley L BoyleDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0002-9934-6655
Brian S MaitnerEversource Energy Center and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0002-2118-9880
George G C BarbosaDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States of America.
Rohith K SajjaDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0002-6328-7593
Xiao FengDepartment of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States of America.
Cory MerowEversource Energy Center and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States of America.
Erica A NewmanSchool of Natural Resources & the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0001-6433-8594
Daniel S ParkDepartment of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States of America.
Patrick R RoehrdanzThe Moore Center for Science, Conservation International, Arlington, VA, United States of America.
Brian J EnquistDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States of America.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Massive biological databases of species occurrences, or georeferenced locations where a species has been observed, are essential inputs for modeling present and future species distributions. Location accuracy is often assessed by determining whether the observation geocoordinates fall within the boundaries of the declared political divisions. This otherwise simple validation is complicated by the difficulty of matching political division names to the correct geospatial object. Spelling errors, abbreviations, alternative codes, and synonyms in multiple languages present daunting name disambiguation challenges. The inability to resolve political division names reduces usable data, and analysis of erroneous observations can lead to flawed results. Here, we present the Geographic Name Resolution Service (GNRS), an application for correcting, standardizing, and indexing world political division names. The GNRS resolves political division names against a reference database that combines names and codes from GeoNames with geospatial object identifiers from the Global Administrative Areas Database (GADM). In a trial resolution of political division names extracted from >270 million species occurrences, only 1.9%, representing just 6% of occurrences, matched exactly to GADM political divisions in their original form. The GNRS was able to resolve, completely or in part, 92% of the remaining 378,568 political division names, or 86% of the full biodiversity occurrence dataset. In assessing geocoordinate accuracy for >239 million species occurrences, resolution of political divisions by the GNRS enabled the detection of an order of magnitude more errors and an order of magnitude more error-free occurrences. By providing a novel solution to a significant data quality impediment, the GNRS liberates a tremendous amount of biodiversity data for quantitative biodiversity research. The GNRS runs as a web service and is accessible via an API, an R package, and a web-based graphical user interface. Its modular architecture is easily integrated into existing data validation workflows.

Indexed as

BiodiversityNamesDatabases, FactualReference Standards

Identifiers

PMID36374834
PMCPMC9662723

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.