Relevé Table File

 

A relevé table file stores a number of relevé data, along with the entry position in a table... The same file format is used in both Primary Table Editor, WorkTableEditor, and SynopticTableEditor.

Releve Table files have XML file format. In each table file there is only one relevé table, although it may contain several relevés inside. Although the XML format is the same, it is highly recommended to use different directories for each type of data (primary or raw tables, work tables and synoptic tables).

Relevé Table file example

 

Relevé Table tags

<releve_table/> : Describes relevé table information. The 'code' attribute of this tag specifies table name. It may contain three types of tags: '<releve/>', '<synoptic_releve/>'and '<releve_table_entry/>'. This last tags specify how relevé entries are arranged in the table. The column arrangement is specified by <releve/> order in the table file. While a releve table file could contain in principle both <releve/> and <synoptic_releve/> tags, this is unsense, since the latter are synthetic information from many relevés.

<releve/> : Described below.

<synoptic_releve/> : Described below.

<releve_table_entry/> : Specifies a row entry in the table. Attributes for the entry are:

• internal code (icode, taxon code)
• name code (namecode, code for this taxon name)
• name (name, taxon name). This is attribute is not necessary, since taxon name is codified by namecode, but it is a safeguard for changing codifications. So Quercus will set it, as long as possible.
• layer of appearance (layer)
• sureness of entry (sureness).

Internal and name codes refer to taxon entries in the current taxon pool (see Taxon Thesaurus file).

 

Relevé tags

<releve/> : Contains all information for a given relevé. This comprises both taxon data (<releve_entry/>) and other data such as ecology, geography, etc. There are three relevé types (attribute type), which defines how abundance data is entered: BB-Braun-Blanquet scale (abundance-sociability), CA-Cover/abundance (0-100%), PA-Presence absence (0/1)

<date/> : Specifies the date when relevé was done. It's composed of a <day>, <month> and <year> subtags.

<area/> : Specifies the surface studied

<plot_form/> : Specifies the form of the plot where taxa where recorded:

• 0-Quadratic
• 1-Linear/band
• 2-Circular,
• 3-Irregular
• 4-Plot combination
• 5-unknown
  

<original_syntaxon/> : Reference code for the syntaxon, if any, which this relevé was originally attributed to (see Syntaxon Thesaurus file).

<current_syntaxon/> : Reference code for the syntaxon, if any, which this relevé is currently attributed to (see Syntaxon Thesaurus file).

<author/> : Name (or code) for an author of the relevé. If several, different <author/> tags must appear.

<releve_entry/> : Specifies a taxon entry in the relevé, which is the minimum information unit. Attributes for the entry are:

• internal code (icode, biological entity code)
• name code (namecode, code for this taxon name)
• name (name, taxon name). This is attribute is not necessary, since taxon name is codified by namecode, but it is a safeguard for changing codifications. So Quercus will set it, as long as possible.
• value of abundance (value)
• layer of appearance (layer)
• sureness of entry (sureness)
• whether this taxon is natural (natureness=NAT) or introduced (natureness=INTRO)
• whether this taxon entry is accepted by editors or not.

Internal and name codes refer to taxon entries in the current taxon pool (see Taxon Thesaurus file).

<side_data/> : Specifies information associated to this relevé. Described in more detail below.

<releve_comments/> : Describes other information which does not fit in any of the preceeding tags.

 

Releve tag example

 

Side Data tags

<side_data/> : Specifies information associated to the parent tag that contains it. It can contain different <datum/> tags inside. Three types of <side_data> exist (type attribute) for relevés:

• ECO- Ecological information.
• GEO- Geographical information.
• STRUCT-Information about the structure of the community.

 

<datum/> : Describes a datum to be recorded for relevés. It has a name attribute which identifies uniquely this type of data. A label attribute describes the datum itself and is used for labelling purposes. Value for the datum is stored inside this this tag.

 

Synoptic Relevé tags

<synoptic_releve/> : Contains all information for a given synoptic relevé.

<synreleve_entry/>: A taxon entry for this synoptic relevé. Equals the relevé entry tag. An additional value is stored as an attribute. The ivalue is an integer value representing the number of original relevés where this taxon entry existed as a relevé entry.

<releve_item/>: Contains the string code of an original relevé used to build this synoptic relevé item.