Introduction
*****************

Description
============
MERIDIAN (Marine Environmental Research Infrastructure for Data Integration and Application Network) is a consortium of 
ocean researchers, computer scientists, and data scientists based out of Dalhousie University (Dal), NS,
with secondary teams at Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), QC, Simon Fraser University (SFU), BC, the University of British Columbia 
(UBC), BC, & the University of Victoria (UVic), BC. One of its intended goals is to develop infrastructure for data discovery of 
ocean acoustic measurements and remote vessel tracking data. 

Many geospatial and oceanographic data discovery services use variations (profiles) on the ISO 19115:2003 metadata standard. 
Not all of these profiles follow the same rules (e.g., the Marine Community Profile adds new elements which are not present in other profiles) thus 
requiring a metadata crosswalk for interoperability. We therefore decided to develop a profile of ISO 19115:2003 to meet the unique needs 
of the underwater acoustic community. 

Our profile is inspired by the IOOS (Integrated Ocean Observing System) Metadata Convention for Passive Acoustic Records (v. 1.0), 
which includes a mapping to ISO 19115-2:2009. The obligation and default values of the metadata elements were based on a review 
of many existing ISO 19115 profiles, including the North American Profile, the Marine Community Profile, and ANZLIC 
(Australia New Zealand Land Information Council). During the development of our profile, we realized that biological 
information was sorely underrepresented in ISO 19115-based profiles. As such, we combined the biologically-focused Darwin 
Core standard with ISO 19115:2003, and assigned obligations and default values through discussions with subject-matter experts. 
Although ISO 19115:2003 is intended to describe both data resources and persisent services, given our focus on data discovery, 
we opted to neglect a formal treatment of services in our profile and this accompanying document.



Document scope
===============

This profile is intended to identify the geospatial metadata needed for global organizations to describe data collected using 
underwater acoustic techniques (e.g., acoustic tagging, passive acoustic recording) or vessel tracking (e.g., AIS) data. 
Metadata elements and suggested codelists have been selected to support information discovery within the context of underwater 
acoustic measurements.

It is based on ISO 19115:2003 Geographic information - Metadata, ISO 19115-2:2009: Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: 
Extensions for imagery and gridded data, and the IOOS Metadata Convention for Passive Acoustic Recordings (v. 1.0). 
Implementation perspectives are based heavily on ISO 19139:2007, ISO 19139-2:2012, and to a lesser degree on ISO 19115-3:2016. 
This profile has also been extended using the Darwin Core (2015) profile for species information, and inspired by 
ISO 19115-2:2019 in adding an additional location to store acquisition event information.

This document is intended to address ISO 19115-2:2009 metadata and Darwin Core metadata captured (or potentially captured) during 
`MERIDIAN's metadata submission process <https://discovery.meridian.cs.dal.ca/>`_. It is not a complete reproduction of the ISO 19115:2003, ISO 19115-2:2009 or Darwin Core profiles.
Where possible, suggestions and best practices are included. 



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