An area of land and/or water in which a species or ecosystem is, or was, present, developed to identify locations of the Element that have the potential to persist if current conditions prevail. Consistency in EOs throughout the range of an element is achieved through the use of standard minimum data criteria and rules of separation specific to that element or group of similar elements.
An EO is developed, on the basis of the area observed to be occupied by the Element. An EO, regardless of whether the occurrence is a principal or sub-EO, is developed from one or more Source Features (i.e., points, lines, and/or polygons), each of which represents a discrete observation, including locational uncertainty associated with the underlying survey information. An EO may be represented as a single contiguous feature or comprising discrete patches.