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Changes to Biometry Protocols 1.0

2025-03-28T13:17:14Z

On 2 August 2023, three changes were made to biometry measurements in relation to the way data observations are counted and displayed. These changes affected biometry - trees, biometry - graminoid biomasses, and biometry - vegetation covers.

Biometry - Trees

Two new fields have been added to the ADAT output for this protocol: “dominant_common_name” and “codominant_common_name”. These have been added to help distinguish between tree types for different measurements. These are required fields when entering data in the GLOBE Observer app, so the decision was made to make these fields available to see when retrieving data measurements for this protocol. About 3% of all measurements (~2k out of ~78k biometry - trees measurements) have been updated to return the common names provided at the time of data entry. All common names for future measurements will be made available in the data output.
Biometry - Vegetation Covers

A rounding error has been corrected for the fields within this protocol. Previously, all percentages in the output were being rounded to either 0% or 100%. With the new update, the percentages are now being returned correctly, rounded to the nearest 1/10th of 1 percent. This update does not affect the number of rows/measurements being returned in the output, it just gives more accurate percentages for fields where applicable for this protocol. About 23% of all measurements (~18k out of ~78k vegetation covers measurements) have been impacted and updated to contain proper percentage calculations.
Biometry - Graminoid Biomasses

There was an issue with the output of the data for this protocol aggregating the number of samples for a single measurement into multiple measurements. This caused the number of measurements for this protocol to be inflated to a larger count than the actual number, and it also means that the averages for each measurement were incorrect. This update fixes that issue so that now each sample is aggregated into a single measurement as it should be, and it correctly calculates the averages for fields where that applies. About 10% of all measurements (~600 out of ~6k graminoid biomasses measurements) have been impacted and updated to properly report the averages of all samples of the measurement into a single row of data (per measurement). This also reduced the number of rows returned from the data output by ~5% (300 out of 6k), which now represents the accurate number of measurements.

GLOBE LAC Plant Taxa Expansion 1.1

2025-03-06T20:16:31Z

WHAT	1. This expansion to the taxa table is utilized when observations for the following protocols are submitted via the web data entry form: Land Cover (dominant tree) requires genus and species as mandatory. Green up and Green down requires genus and species as mandatory. Carbon Cycle requires genus and species as mandatory. 2. This expansion to the taxa table is also utilized when observations for the following protocols are submitted via the GLOBE Observer App's Data Entry tool: Green up and Green down requires genus and species as mandatory. Carbon Cycle requires genus and species as mandatory.
WHY	Prior to the expansion of the taxa table, many LAC tree data could not be uploaded to the website; it is mandatory to select genus and species from a defined list in order to upload data. The "Trees within LAC" campaign was promoting projects on carbon cycle, land cover, and green up and green down, and needed a broader range of possible taxa, reflective of the great biodiversity of the LAC region.
WHEN	This list of species was added to the GLOBE database and integrated into data entry fields on 2024-06-05
WHERE	This taxa list includes species for all of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) GLOBE Countries: Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay
HOW	Family, genus, and species information was aggregated from country-level tree lists obtained from: https://www.bgci.org/resources/bgci-databases/globaltree-portal/country-search/ Higher-order taxonomic classifications (Phylum, Class, and Order) for the list were obtained as follows: First, search the Catalogue of Life 2014 Annual Checklist for each family. If present, include the classification from that source as well as a hyperlink. https://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2014/browse/tree/ If a taxon is not present in the Catalogue of Life 2014 annual checklist, locate it on Tropicos.org and include the classification from that source as well as a hyperlink. https://tropicos.org/home Considerations Equisetopsida: Tropicos uses the Equisetopsida class, instead of Magnolipsida Magnoliopsida: Catalogue of Life uses the Magnoliopsida class instead of Equisetopsida
WHO	This taxa list was compiled by GLOBE Latin America and Caribbean "Trees within LAC" Campaign leaders: Mariana Savino - Regional Coordinator (GLOBE LAC Regional Office), Josefina González (Communications Assistant, GLOBE LAC Regional Office), Ana Prieto, Andrea Ventoso, Claudia Caro
CITATIONS	BGCI 2024. GlobalTree Portal. Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Richmond, U.K. Available at https://www.bgci.org/resources/bgci-databases/globaltree-portal/country-search/. Accessed 05/2024. Roskov Y., Kunze T., Orrell T., Abucay L., Paglinawan L., Culham A., Bailly N., Kirk P., Bourgoin T., Baillargeon G., Decock W., De Wever A., Didžiulis V., eds. (2014). Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life, 2014 Annual Checklist. Digital resource at www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2014. Species 2000: Naturalis, Leiden, the Netherlands. Tropicos, Botanical Information System at the Missouri Botanical Garden - www.tropicos.org. Accessed May 2024.

Download LAC Tree Species List as XLSX

Eclipse Data Documentation 1.1

2024-03-07T19:59:38Z

During solar eclipses, the ability to enter current air temperature data has been/will be made available to users of the app who have not gone through GLOBE training, but are using the GLOBE Eclipse tool. For eclipses after the 2017 event, the appearance of the GLOBE Eclipse tool has been constrained geographically to roughly the area experiencing the eclipse (notes about region with each individual eclipse below.)

Air temperatures reported through the Eclipse tool (by trained or untrained users) can be distinguished by the field labeled “airtempsComments” in the API and “air temps:comments” in ADAT. Data points with comments in the format {"temp":"36.2","units":"C"} were entered via the Eclipse tool. The unit value will be C or F depending on whether the app user reported measurements in Celsius or Fahrenheit although temperatures are converted as needed and stored in Celsius only in the “airtempsCurrentTemp” or “air temps:current temp (deg C)” fields for the API/ADAT respectively. Other values in this comments field may indicate automated weather stations, such as (Phase 4 Email Data Entry), Earth Networks, or Weatherbug. Trained GLOBE users entering data via other means (online web forms or the Data Entry app, which was incorporated into GLOBE Observer for the atmosphere protocols in July 2021) also have the opportunity to enter custom comments associated with the data, including observations about current conditions.

The Eclipse tool was/will be opened to users during these four previous and one upcoming eclipse events:

Total Solar Eclipse 21 August 2017 (North America):

Limited testing with a few data points in the database beginning 15 August, full availability for data submission 18 August through 22 August
No geographic limitation on visibility of Eclipse tool

Total Solar Eclipse 02 July 2019 (South America):

Data submission available on 01 July and 02 July
Eclipse tool visibility: -65 to 20 latitude, -100 to -35 longitude

Total Solar Eclipse 14 December 2020 (South America):

Data submission available from 07 December to 15 December
Eclipse tool visibility: -70 to 3 latitude, -100 to -25 longitude

Annular Solar Eclipse 14 October 2023 (North, Central and South America):

Data submission available only on 14 October
Eclipse tool visibility: polygon represented in this GeoJSON file for 2023

Total Solar Eclipse 08 April 2024 (North and Central America):

Data submission planned to be available from 01 April 2024 to 08 April 2024
Eclipse tool visibility: polygon represented in this GeoJSON file for 2024

Landcover Supplementary Photos added 1.0

2024-02-22T17:35:11Z

On 12/22/2023 the Observer app / Landcover module was modified to allow users to include up to 4 "special feature" photos. The intent is to allow users to photograph up to 4 features which may exist in the landcover site being surveyed. These photos are optional and are not required to be taken in the cardinal directions. Directional information is obtained from the mobile device when available and is stored with the photos as "extra data" which can be used by researchers.

Python Notebook Samples 1.1

2023-03-03T00:20:50Z

Below are Python Notebooks that provide models to pull and analyze data from GLOBE's API.

Changes Incorporated in Volume 2 1.1

2023-03-03T00:20:15Z

The following announcements were incorporated into Volume 2 and are kept here for archival purposes.

2019-10-09 Latitude and longitude data-1 1.1

2023-03-02T17:50:01Z

Latitude and longitude data

9 October 2019

Effective September 15, 2019, the site location as defined by the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) and the true latitude and longitude of an observation made with the NASA GLOBE Observer mobile app are both returned by the GLOBE Advanced Data Access Tool (ADAT),GLOBE Visualization System (Vis), andGLOBE Application Programming Interface (API) in the downloaded dataset. GLOBE Observer data are impacted (i.e., observations made with the Observer app). Need help? Contact help@globe.gov.

Background

GLOBE uses the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) as a reference geographic coordinate system. You can read more about the MGRS grid in the GLOBE Data User Guide. If a user queried the GLOBE database, the user would see a latitude, longitude, and elevation associated with each GLOBE observation in the downloaded dataset. For data submitted via the GLOBE Online Data Entry Form, GLOBE Data Entry app, or GLOBE Email Data Entry, the latitude, longitude, and elevation in the downloaded dataset were the location data input by the participant. For data submitted via the GLOBE Observer mobile app, the latitude, longitude, and elevation in the downloaded dataset were defined at the lower left corner of the associated MGRS gridbox and were based upon the first observation submitted from any participant and any protocol that fell within the associated MGRS gridbox.

What changed?

Effective September 15, 2019, the site location as defined by the MGRS grid and the true latitude and longitude of an observation made with the NASA GLOBE Observer mobile app are both returned by the GLOBE Advanced Data Access Tool (ADAT),GLOBE Visualization System (Vis), andGLOBE Application Programming Interface (API) in the downloaded dataset. Data submitted via the GLOBE Online Data Entry Form, GLOBE Data Entry app, or GLOBE Email Data Entry are not impacted. This change only affects GLOBE Observer data.

Effective September 15, 2019, satellite matching for GLOBE Observer Clouds is now utilizing the true latitude and longitude. Previous GLOBE Observer data was matched coincident to MGRS.

The “true” location of an Observer measurement is the latitude and longitude recorded by the Global Position System (GPS) reading from a person’s mobile device. The GLOBE Observer app does not convey GPS elevation, but instead a Google web service is used that determines elevation based on WGS84 EGM96 geoid height.

Below is an example of the new, updated data output from ADAT . The example is for land cover data. The site latitude, longitude, and latitude associated as defined by the lower left corner of the MGRS grid box are in columns E, F, and G, respectively.

The true GPS latitude, longitude, and elevation of GLOBE Observer measurements are in columns AS, AT, and AU respectively.

Here is an example of land cover data output from the GLOBE API. The variables "latitude", "longitude", "elevation" highlighted yellow are the site location as defined by the lower left corner of the MGRS grid box.

The variables "landcoversMeasurementLatitude", "landcoversMeasurementLongitude", "landcoversMeasurementElevation" are the true location of an Observer measurement.

2019-09-23 GLOBE Observer elevation data-1 1.1

2023-03-02T17:49:45Z

GLOBE Observer elevation data

23 September 2019

GLOBE's GPS protocol states that a site's elevation is in relation to mean sea level (MSL). In 1995, the thinking was that sites would be only defined over land and so the elevation would be based upon the topographic elevation difference from MSL. Most GPS devices in the 1990s and early 2000s used the elipsoid model to determine elevation, which could be as much as 100m off from the geoid height. GLOBE's former database converted the GPS elevation values to geoid heights and presented those geoid heights on the legacy Vis system. In 2014, GLOBE discontinued this practice because most newer GPS devices are capable of determining elevation using the geoid height themselves. The GLOBE Observer app does not convey GPS elevation, but instead a Google web service is used that determines the height from MSL based upon the WGS84 EGM96 geoid height. It includes both bathymetry and topography values. The consumer of GLOBE data can assume that a returned elevation value for a site is based upon the geoid height of the landform from MSL. In other words, if the coordinates are over dry land it will be the topographic height. If the coordinates are over the ocean or sea, then elevation is reported is the distance of the seafloor from MSL expressed as a negative value.

2019-10-01 GLOBE Observer land cover launch date correction-1 1.1

2023-03-02T17:49:14Z

GLOBE Observer land cover launch date correction

1 October 2019

The land cover tool in the GLOBE Observer mobile app was launched in September 2018. The GLOBE Data User Guide v1.0 incorrectly stated the land cover tool launched in October 2018.

2021-05-28 Filter by Teams Available 1.2

2023-03-02T17:52:03Z

GLOBE's Advanced Data Access Tool (ADAT) and API (ElasticSearch) now support the ability to find measurements by GLOBE team name.

With the API, you will need to know the exact spelling of the team name. A new search by feature can be seen on the API landing page - https://api.globe.gov/search:

/v1/measurement/protocol/measureddate/globeteams/
Find measurements by protocol, measured date range and GLOBE team name.

With ADAT the new Teams search is available under the site filters: School/Teacher/Partner/Team. This filter supports an auto fill capability. Begin typing the name of the team and then select from the provided list.

Since the teams capability is relatively recent, no data will be returned associated with a GLOBE team prior to 2019.

2020-07-08 Python Notebook for Non-Linear Regression MHM Protocols 1.4

2023-03-02T17:50:46Z

Python notebook used to compare Mosquito Habitat Mapper protocol bundle data. Uses linear regression as initial parameters for non-linear regression between two protocols.

jupyter_notebook_config.py

regression.ipynb

Download all files here: regression.zip

2020-04-08 Python Notebook for MHM 1.1

2023-03-02T17:47:08Z

2020-04-08 Python Notebook for MHM (files updated 7-1-2020)

2020-06-24 Python Notebook for MHM bundle data 1.1

2023-03-02T17:47:20Z

2020-06-24 Python Notebook for Selecting Data on a Map

2020-06-24 Python Notebook for Selecting Data on a Map 1.2

2023-03-02T17:48:02Z

Python notebook used to pull all Mosquito Habitat Mapper protocol bundle data from a geographic region defined by the user. User draws a region on a map and all bundle data is returned for that region.

zip file for all documents below - bundler.zip

jupyter_notebook_config.py

bundler.ipynb

2020-04-08 Python Notebook for MHM (files updated 7-1-2020) 1.1

2023-03-02T17:47:37Z

2020-04-08 Python Notebook to retrieve and graph MHM data

2020-04-08 Python Notebook to retrieve and graph MHM data 1.4

2023-03-02T17:48:26Z

Files Updated 2020-07-01

There is now a beta version of a python-based Jupyter notebook, which can be used to pull data from the GLOBE API for Mosquito Habitat Mapper. The notebook includes code and examples of how to pull the data, remove outliers, and graph and plot the results.

The full .zip package is here: mosquitoes.zip

The package includes:

R EADME.md

Requirements

Jupyter_Notebook_Config.py

mosquitoes.ipynb

mosquitoes.py

postBuild

2020-01-26 GLOBE API - Change Announcement 1.2

2023-03-02T17:50:35Z

26 January 2020

Summary of Changes:
We are modifying the GLOBE API so that variables currently output as strings are output as integers, floats and booleans. This will provide data type consistency between the source files, ADAT data, and Elasticsearch data stores. We are upgrading the servers associated with the GLOBE API to improve performance and stability.

Affected Systems:
Primarily - GLOBE API
Secondarily - The GLOBE database will be under greater than usual load which may impact overall system performance.
Secondarily - The GLOBE Advanced Data Access Tool (ADAT) may return incomplete data for a given protocol when that protocol is being processed. Users will be informed which protocol is being processed on the ADAT main page.

Affected Protocols:
All GLOBE protocols

Affected Users:
All users who currently consume data from the GLOBE API may be affected. Users of GLOBE's ADAT tool may be intermittently affected.

Planned Timeline:
Data Migration in Production: 22 January 2020 - 26 January 2020
Test and Validation of new server environment: 26 January 2020 - 30 January 2020
New API server "live" in production - 30 January 2020

Send Comments to: help@globe.gov

Discussion
The current implementation of Elasticsearch (which drives the GLOBE API) returns data in GeoJSON or JSON formats. Both formats have the capability to allow JSON values to have the simple data types string (with double-quotes), number (integers and floats), boolean (true or false, without double-quotes), and null. However, all JSON values within the GLOBE API "data" subset are being returned as strings (which include numbers and booleans). For example, the userId is currently output as a string when it should be an integer. The planned changes will modify records which are currently incorrectly output as strings to their appropriate numeric or boolean format.

For example, JSON is currently being returned that looks like:
{"data": {
"string_field": "GLOBE",
"integer_field": "100",
"float_field": "23.45",
"boolean_field": "f",
"boolean_field_2": "false"}
}
After this change, it will look like:
{"data": {
"string_field": "GLOBE",
"integer_field": 100,
"float_field": 23.45,
"boolean_field": false,
"boolean_field_2": false}
}

Impact
It is possible if you have written a program to read from the API that this change may impact your program's ability to read the data.

FrontPage 1.7

2024-06-11T21:01:49Z

User Guide Updates

The GLOBE Data User Guide v2.0 has now been posted, effective 30 December 2022 (see link above). Going forward, this page will include updates that will be incorporated into v3.0. A new version of the User Guide is only planned to be released at approximately annual intervals. This page is to provide the GLOBE community and end users with updates in a timely manner.

Questions or comments should be addressed to: help@nasaglobe.org.