InfoVeg

Today (Sept 3, 2009), Alan and I [Michael] had a productive conversation about how and for
which species we should fuzz plot locations. I described our current
approach, which rounds plot locations to the nearest 0.01 degree for
Lat and Long to approximate a 1km fuzzing, 0.1 degree for 10km fuzzing
and 1 degree for 100km fuzzing. Alan asked a great question as to
what radius this resulted in. It yields the centroid of a 0.01, 0.1,
or 1 degree box, which amounts to a DIAMETER of a little less than the
1km, 10km, and 100km.

I ran a quick algorithm for all plots in our database and found that
if we say we are fuzzing 100 km (1 degree), the average distance from
those points to our plots is 34.7km. If we are trying for 10km (0.1
deg), we get 3.7km. If we try to 1km (0.01 deg), we get 380m. We
would expect a smaller number than what we are aiming for, but clearly
these are a bit low.

So we probably should either round to the nearest 0.02, 0.2, and 2
degree boxes, or actually write an algorithm that will pick a point at
random within the specified radius. I don't think that should be too
hard.

Next, and the key item, Alan said that he didn't think all rare
species should be fuzzed. There are plenty that have no economical
value, are not of interest to poachers, and are difficult to get to in
any case. He said that the key ones to block are Panax, some orchids,
some lillies, carniverous species except Utricularia. I'm probably
missing some. Also we need to fuzz locations for all bogs plots given
the possible existence of bog turtles there, though those don't turn
up in our data. I have fuzzed all of Brenda's bog plots in project 73
already in the community summary pages. Alan said he could come up
with a list of species for us without taking too much effort, as well
as an appropriate fuzzing. He expressed a desire to fuzz more than
10km but less than 100km, which we might want to consider, as well.