Hi John,
Thank you for your reply. My answers are inline:
> A) Do I correctly understand that these metrics are with respect to an
earth environment (as opposed to within a specific animal)?
Most of the list can be divided into two groups -
1. ecosystem functions (have an area of land surface as a denominator);
2. plant traits, where the denominator might be 'per plant' or 'per area
leaf', or it could be a ratio (mass ratio of element / biomass, ratio of
leaf to root, etc).
> B) biomass_fraction_of_<some compound> -- it isn't obvious to me what
the denominator of the fraction is. Assuming it is always the same thing,
perhaps we can specify it in the standard name, as in the
mass_concentration_of_x_in_y pattern. I am not sure exactly what your item
means, so it will help to understand a bit more.
I see the ambiguity. I can change 'biomass fraction' to
mass_concentration_of_X_in_biomass
> C) How many compounds and plant organs are you dealing with so far, and
does this change often? While there are many mass_concentration_of_<some
compound> terms, I worry about the addition of large numbers of standard
names corresponding to each broad concept. For the CF list folks, this is
similar to another item we discussed recently, re taxon identifiers:
http://kitt.llnl.gov/trac/ticket/99. (I see this isn't resolved, waiting on
me even. Ahem.)
1. Organs: although many exist, we use ~ 5 (stem, leaf, root, wood,
storage)
2. Taxonomy: our approach is consistent with using taxon as a dimension.
none of the variable names refer to a specific taxon
> D) Moving along, then: If there are many (>20, say) compounds or plant
organs, is there a specific vocabulary that your community uses to specify
<some compound> and <some plant organ>?
I think these lists will be < 20, but I will look into an appropriate
controlled vocabulary.
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Received on Fri Jul 11 2014 - 09:55:40 BST
