14 million records of over 4,000 Bavarian plant species centrally recorded
Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection, Bavarian State Collection for Botany & SNSB IT Center
With around 14 million records of over 4,000 plant species occurring in Bavaria, the new plant portal has grown to become the largest botanical database in Bavaria. From this, a comprehensive plant atlas “Flora of Bavaria” will be developed in the coming years. Bavaria’s Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber emphasized this today in Munich: “We have before us the first digital botanical map of Bavaria. For the first time in over 100 years, the complete inventory of plants in Bavaria has been systematically recorded and described. Every citizen can experience the natural treasures of the Free State of Bavaria digitally from home. And everyone can help with the mapping. This is how botany becomes a citizen’s business. The online portal makes the historical and current distribution of all Bavarian plant species accessible to the public. This data is elementary for nature conservation: it helps to identify the endangerment of individual species and to clarify how they can be protected. Species assistance programs can also build on this foundation. Our clear goal is to raise species conservation in Bavaria to a top level with innovative projects. I thank the many volunteer plant experts, scientists, associations and authorities for their indispensable efforts in this major project.”
There are more than 4,000 different flowering plants and ferns in Bavaria. This makes the Free State one of the most species-rich German states. More than 85 percent of the plants found in Germany are found in Bavaria. The collection of precise data on the distribution and frequency of individual species is the subject of the joint project “Flora of Bavaria”. In order to bundle the information and ensure uniform quality, the Bavarian State Office for the Environment, in cooperation with the Bavarian State Collection for Botany, has set up a coordination office “Flora Conservation in Bavaria”. Its purpose is the permanent documentation of Bavaria’s native flora and the understanding of its development. “Climate change in particular is currently contributing to changes in the native flora, but other influences can now also be reanalyzed and evaluated on the basis of this comprehensive data,” explains Dagmar Triebel, head of the data center at the Bavarian Natural History Collections (SNSB).
The “Flora of Bavaria” working group, founded by mostly volunteer plant experts, continuously optimizes and expands the existing data collection. The coordination office is located at the Bavarian State Collection for Botany, an SNSB institution, and uses the IT infrastructure of the data center. It is supported by the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment with around 150,000 euros annually.
The last state-wide survey with the publication of a Bavarian flora dates back to 1914 by Franz Vollmann.
(Source: Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection)
Links:
- Bayernflora data portal: http://daten.bayernflora.de
- Bayernflora Wiki: http://bayernflora.de
Contact:
Dr. Dagmar Triebel
SNSB – Botanical State Collection Munich (SNSB-BSM) & SNSB IT Center
Menzinger Str. 67, 80638 Munich, Germany
Phone: +49 89 17861 252
E-mail: triebel@snsb.de