Local Plant Conversion Guidelines and Diagnostics

The abomination known as the Local Plant table was introduced for what seemed to be a good reason at the time. In earlier versions of NASIS, whenever you opened a choice list, all available choices were automatically displayed. This was OK in most cases. This was not OK in the case of a plant lookup where the user had to wait until 70-some thousand plants were loaded into the choice list. To get past this problem we created an intermediate table, the Local Plant table, that contained only those plants referenced by an MLRA office. When the user wanted to select some plant for some component vegetative table, they only had to wait for the smaller list of plants in the Local Plant table to load. The only time a user had to take the hit of loading all 70-some thousand plants was when they needed to add a new plant to their Local Plant table.

Since then we have modified choice list processing such that lists containing more than 100 choices are not automatically loaded when the user opens the choice list. For lists containing more than 100 choices, the user is required to either search the list for a specific choice, or the user may still enter an “*” in the search criteria to bring up the entire choice list. This change made repeated lookups into the official Plant table more feasible. In addition, you can now search the plant list by plant symbol, national vernacular name and scientific name. For the earlier, less sophisticated choice list, you were limited to searching by plant symbol. I’ll grant you that lookups directly into the official Plant table don’t work at warp speed, but my experience is that the average dataset manager is quite a bit more patient than I am.

The Local Plant table also provided a way to make references to synonym plant symbols and to record the older common name associated with that synonym plant symbol. This was important in cases where we disagreed with some botanist who determined that a number of species that we perceived as being different, should be consolidated into a single species. Perhaps the best example of this is in the case of some of the bluegrass species variants. It is still considered a valid business practice to reference a synonym plant symbol.

Unfortunately, in the conversion that created the Local Plant table, I made the mistake of assuming that all synonym plant symbols should be converted to their corresponding accepted symbol. This was a mistake that has cost a number of dataset managers a great deal of time in correcting things back to the way they were. I apologize for not having done a better job of analysis before we performed that conversion. Hopefully, this page is evidence that we are trying to do a better job of providing dataset managers with the details of upcoming conversions, so that they may comment on them before we make another mistake.

Until a few months ago, the procedure that the Plants project followed was to drop all of the information associated with a plant symbol at the time that symbol became a synonym symbol. Only the symbol itself, and the symbol or symbols that it was correlated into, were retained. After a joint meeting between the Plants and Soils projects sometime in 1998, that procedure was changed. From now on, if a plant symbol becomes a synonym symbol, all of the original information associated with that symbol will be retained, including distribution data and regional common names. The Plants project is going to reconstruct this information for synonym symbols that we are currently referencing in NASIS.

Because the official Plant table will now include fully characterized synonym symbol plant data, and because we can now make lookups directly into the official Plant table in a reasonable time frame, we want to drop the intermediate Local Plant table and begin making vegetative references directly to the official Plant table.

In preparation for this eventual conversion, we have provided a number of diagnostic reports and editing recommendations to assist you in editing invalid plants in your Local Plant table.

Diagnostic Report Descriptions

SDQ - Local Plant Symbols Linked to “UNKNOWN”

This report shows all records in your Local Plant table that are linked to the record in the official Plant table whose plant symbol is “UNKNOWN”. These records represent plants that, when originally converted, had no corresponding record in the official Plant table, based on an attempt to match on the combination of plant symbol and plant scientific name. In many cases, a mismatch occurred due to a slight difference in scientific name. These records in your Local Plant table should be edited prior to conversion. Throughout all MLRA Offices, there are about 1800 such records (about 700 distinct).

Scott Peterson of the National Plant Data Center in Baton Rouge LA has reviewed this complete list and provided his best guess at the proper corresponding official plant. Scott’s suggested translations may be either viewed on-line or downloaded and printed, in order to assist you in your editing.

This document requires Acrobat Reader.

Scott Peterson’s Bad Plant Symbol Translation List (PDF; 75 KB)

SDQ - Local Plant Symbol Not Consistent With Official Plant Symbol

This report shows all records in your Local Plant table that are linked to a valid Plant table record (one whose plant symbol is not “UNKNOWN”), where the symbol in your Local Plant table does not match its corresponding symbol in the official Plant table. In addition, local plant symbol IS NOT a valid synonym of the official plant symbol. These records in your Local Plant table should be edited prior to conversion. These records likely represent cases where you started to correct our original mistake in converting synonym symbols into accepted symbols, but the job was not finished for some reason. Throughout all MLRA Offices, there are about 1900 such records (about 1000 distinct).

SDQ - Local Plant Symbol is Synonym of Official Plant Symbol

This report shows all records in your Local Plant table where local plant symbol is a valid synonym of official plant symbol. These records most likely represent cases where you corrected our original mistake in converted synonym symbols into accepted symbols. It is likely that you changed the accepted symbol in the Local Plant table back to the proper synonym symbol, edited local plant name, but then didn’t relink that Local Plant table record to the corresponding official Plant table synonym plant record. These records do not represent errors per se. In the conversion in which we drop the Local Plant table, we will go ahead and create the correct linkage to the proper synonym symbol in the official Plant table. Throughout all MLRA offices, there are currently only about 30 such records.

SDQ - Mismatched Plant State Common Names

This report shows all records in your Local Plant table where local plant common name does not match the corresponding official plant state common name. The comparisons in this report are based on using a legend’s corresponding state context. A legend’s state context is determined by looking at the first two characters of a legend’s corresponding area symbol. For this reason, the only data mapunits considered in this report are those associated with traditional non-MLRA soil survey areas. While a plant may have more than one state common name, only one of those common names will be considered the “official” state common name. For the plants that occur in this report, someone is going to have to negotiate one and only one “official” state common name. If this is not done prior to the conversion that drops the Local Plant table, plant related reports subsequent to that conversion will display state common names other than what you expected.

This report appears to take a long time to run. You might consider starting it up at the end of the day and letting it run overnight.

SDQ - Missing Plant State Common Names

This report shows all records in your Local Plant table for which there is no corresponding official plant state common name. The comparisons in this report are based on using a legend’s corresponding state context. A legend’s state context is determined by looking at the first two characters of a legend’s corresponding area symbol. For this reason, the only data mapunits considered in this report are those associated with traditional non-MLRA soil survey areas. Plants that occur in this report will be used to initially populate the lists of “official” state common names. Therefore you should review the plants that occur in this report to verify that they have the state common name that you wish to see in the future.

This report appears to take a long time to run. You might consider starting it up at the end of the day and letting it run overnight.

Conversion Rules

As far as these rules are concerned, a valid official plant is any record in the official Plant table whose symbol is not “UNKNOWN”. A valid local plant is any record in the Local Plant table liked to a valid official plant, where local plant symbol matches official plant symbol, or local plant symbol is a valid synonym symbol of official plant symbol.

Every reference to a valid Local Plant table record will be replaced with a direct reference to the appropriate corresponding official Plant table record.

Every reference to an invalid Local Plant table record will cause the following to occur. A record corresponding to the invalid Local Plant record will be inserted into the official Plant table. This record will be owned by the NASIS site doing the conversion. A pseudo official plant symbol will be generated. This pseudo plant symbol cannot conflict with any existing official plant symbol. The concatenation of the existing local plant symbol and local plant scientific name will be used to populate the official plant scientific name column. We can’t populate official plant symbol with local plant symbol because that may cause a conflict. Local plant common name will be used to populate the official plant national vernacular name. After this record is inserted into the official Plant table, the reference to the original Local Plant record will be replaced with a reference to this newly inserted record. All of the original information is retained and a NASIS user may correct the invalid plant reference at a later date.

Editing Recommendations

As with the rules for the conversion of ecological site related information, we have provided a set of conversion rules that do not require you to get every problem resolved prior to conversion. There is incentive to correct as many problems as possible prior to conversion, because the existing diagnostic reports no longer work once conversion has taken place. If you have the time to address some of the issues with the Local Plant table prior to conversion, here are our recommendations.

Resolve all references to “UNKNOWN”.

Edit every record in your Local Plant table that is linked to the “official” plant record whose plant symbol is “UNKNOWN”. This list of Local Plant table records is available in the report titled Local Plant Symbols Linked to “UNKNOWN”. Use the diagnostic list that Scott Peterson has provided to assist you in this effort. When you are finished making such an edit, the plant symbol in the Local Plant table should match the corresponding plant symbol in the official Plant table. This may involve both editing fields in the Local Plant table, and relinking to a different record in the official Plant table.

This document requires Acrobat Reader.

Scott Peterson’s Bad Plant Symbol Translation List (PDF; 75 KB)

Restore the synonym symbols that we (OK, I) screwed up.

In the places in the Local Plant table where I mistakenly converted a synonym symbol into an accepted symbol, restore the proper synonym symbol in the Local Plant table, and restore local plant common name. Ideally, you should then relink the edited record in the Local Plant table to the appropriate synonym symbol record in the official Plant table. You do not have to take this second step. As long as the symbol in the Local Plant table is a valid synonym of the corresponding record in the official Plant table, we will take care of making this reconnection during conversion. It’s the least we can do considering all of the agony that I caused.

Correct any remaining plant symbol mismatches.

Use the report titled Local Plant Symbol Not Consistent With Official Plant Symbol to find the remaining problems in the Local Plant table. Somehow, what is recorded in the Local Plant table has to be brought into sync with the corresponding record in the official Plant table. Again, this may require editing of local plant symbol and local plant name, relinking to a different official plant, or both. In the end, local plant symbol needs to match the plant symbol in the corresponding record in the official Plant table.

For the Local Plant table records you edit, verify, and if necessary correct, local plant common name.

The common names that currently exist in your Local Plant table will not be retained, per se. After this conversion has taken place, all regional common names will be provided from the official Plants database. Nevertheless, the common names in the Local Plant table are important. They will be used to populate missing state common names in the official Plant database. They will also be verified against any existing state common name in the official Plants database. Unless the record in your Local Plant table has the common name you want to see, future reports may display a different common name that you did not expect. Please see the section titled “Common Name Issues” for more about common names.

Note that it is possible to have a single record in your Local Plant table that is related to either one data mapunit that is used in more than one state, or is related to more than one data mapunit that collectively represent several states. If you edit the local plant name to be consistent with one existing state common name, that may immediately cause that record’s local plant name to be inconsistent with the common name for that same plant for some other state. The solution to this problem is to create duplicates of the Local Plant table record and edit them such that for each of the duplicates, they are effectively referenced by data mapunits that all pertain to the same state.

Common Name Issues

In the beginning was SSSD, and the context of SSSD was a particular state. Map units were map units and dealing with plant common names was good. Then, after the fall, there was NASIS, and the context of NASIS was a region, and there came to be an “official plant list” and pseudo georeferenced data mapunits, and dealing with plant common names was not so good.

In SSSD, you simply edited the Plantnm table to reflect the common names you wished to use in your state. One, and only one, common name was associated with a plant symbol. For the most part, you never worried about state boundaries because all of your data pertained to one and only one state. You had the power to create a new plant symbol if you so desired.

Now we have made a commitment to use the officially sanctioned NRCS list of plants. The NASIS database was designed such that a data mapunit, the entity in which plant references are recorded, may be associated with two or more soil surveys that cross geographic (state, MLRA, etc.) boundaries. At present, a single NASIS database is typically a repository for more than one state’s data. For the sake of consistency, we don’t want different NRCS field applications to be using different common names for the same plant in the same state.

The fact that a plant is now associated with a data mapunit that may be used for more than one geographic area, means that we can no longer associate one and only one common name with a referenced plant symbol. Now we have to determine which common name to use based on the geographic context of the legend in which that data mapunit is referenced. What’s more, in order to be consistent from one NRCS field application to another, we all have to be using a common set of regional (state, national, MLRA, etc.) common names.

The Plants and NASIS projects have reached an agreement that the Plants project will provide the official list of plants that may be referenced in NRCS applications, as well as the “official” set of regional common names for that set of plants. Representatives for Soils will coordinate with someone identified in their state who will be assigned responsibility for addressing state common name issues. Initially, the only geographic regions for which common names will be supplied are state and national contexts. The updated official Plants database is being designed with the capability to begin to record common names for any desired geographic context (state, national, MLRA, etc.). The Soils Division has agreed that they can live with one “official” common name for a plant in a geographic region. This does not exclude the possibility of recording more than one common name for a plant in a particular geographic region - it’s just that only one of those common names will be considered the “official” common name.

What does this mean as far as NASIS is concerned? It means that, in the future, when you generate a report with plant references that includes plant common names, that report is going to have to know the geographic context for which it is intended. Providing this context may be in some cases be an automatic process. In other cases, providing this context may be a manual process, such as using a parameter dialog to input the geographic context immediately prior to report generation. The other impact is that suddenly, we need to be very concerned about getting the “official” plant regional common name list fully populated, and resolving all existing differences.

Contacts

If you have any questions about anything presented here, please contact any of the following:

Terry Aho
taho@por.usda.gov

Dorn Egley
dorn.egley@ftp.usda.gov