Understanding the many fields of the BMDE can be a daunting task! Some are self-explanatory, like Country or Genus, while others require explanation, like GlobalUniqueIdentifier or ObservationDescriptor6. When you first look at data formatted using the BMDE, it can be difficult to know where to start.

It is important to know that not all fields must be used by each dataset. There are only four strictly required fields for data imported into NatureCounts. Beyond these, each dataset uses only the additional fields it needs to capture the details of its observations. In any given dataset, then, many of the fields may be blank.

Photo by Kris Cu

It is also important to know that while some fields always have equivalent meanings in every dataset (e.g. YearCollected is always the four-digit year of the observation), other fields may be used differently by different projects. This is especially true of the Effort and Observation fields, which are detailed in the following sections.

A description of every field in the BMDE can be viewed on the BMDE Fields page of the NatureCounts website. The following sections explain some of the more confusing fields in further detail.

Next section: Global Unique Identifiers