NA fill values or Notes on taxonomy crossover

[adamkemberling]

In the NOAA data there is a note about instances where taxa were identified and but not down to the stage and other notes where an abundance value has been marked with -9999 to indicate some sort of missing or incomplete information.

In the SAHFOS data there are similar breadcrumbs but not a consistent deployment of -9999 to flag these cases.

I'm not sure how best to preserve this information in the data or whether or not to make some rule for how we handled them. Leaving this issue here so there is a record that I am aware of the problem and so I hopefully don't forget.

[adamkemberling]

To elaborate on how these have been treated 5/28/2022:

• The MBA and NOAA data that preserves it in its original form have not had the data altered or replaced. These will contain the -9999 encodings for abundances, and any text like: (total) in the taxon names.
• Data for the complete timeseries has had abundances swapped to NA and anything carrying redundant information like: spp. in the taxon names has been removed so that there is better record matching against aphia ID's

I'm doing this on the weekend because I'm afraid I will forget. Not because I'm a workaholic (the opposite really).