I’m planning on exporting data from GBIF to test modelling species distributions; however, how accurate will they be if if the species is vulnerable or endangered, and the locations are obscured?

Depends on how fine-grained your modelling is. The obscured observations are represented as a random point in a 0.2x0.2 degree rectangle, which varies in size depending on how far from the equator it is. https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/geoprivacy

I believe that in some cases the GPS coords just don’t show up on GBIF for obscured data. They will give the uncertainty anyways and list it as around 28 km. I just tested it by pulling some GBIF data for bog turtles and looking at it, but I’d suggest just downloading a sample dataset from GBIF and …

Obscured data exported to GBIF

General

Star3 August 17, 2020, 1:47am 2

If this is correct, obscured locations are fake coordinates.

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Obscured data exported to GBIF

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