Since 2001 the German Working Group on Vegetation Databases is dedicated to the development of phytosociological databases. In the face of rampant biodiversity loss, the care for native species and the restoration of communities and ecosystem functions has become an important tool for nature conservation. Interfering with ecological complexity, restoration has to be informed by profound knowledge of species and their interactions in communities. To anticipate actionism, its success has to be carefully measured. Vegetation databases must play a crucial role in the planning, monitoring and readjustment of restoration measures. As comprehensive archives of species co-occurrence vegetation databases allow to define target species and forecast interactions with their competitors and facilitators. For given target species, they allow to identify habitats and communities most suited for re-establishment. Monitoring data stored in databases are readily accessible to statistical analysis of effects and trajectories. The German working group on vegetation databases has therefore chosen ecological restoration as the focal topic of its 13th workshop to be held at the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BFG) in Koblenz from 24 - 26 February 2014. ... [Information of the supplier]
Vegetation databases have proven an irreplaceable medium to store and maintain the vast volume of data produced by vegetation scientists worldwide. They do not only protect data and the laborious work invested to produce them from getting lost, but also enable scientists to analyse large datasets in order to answer current research questions. A major task of present research is to find underlying ecological, temporal and spatial processes that shape plant communities. In this context, databases can serve as important tools supplementing experimental approaches. Inference of processes requires e.g. linkages to environmental data at adequate temporal and spatial scales and plant functional data, but also advanced statistical methods like path analysis techniques. The next meeting of the German Working Group on Vegetation Databases is dedicated to the role databases are playing in detecting ecological processes from various vegetation-related data. We encourage presentations (talks and posters) focussing on questions and methods with special emphasis on the analysis of vegetation data with respect to underlying ecological processes and cause and effect relationships. Besides, more general contributions on other technical or scientific advances in vegetation databanking are welcome. The workshop will be hosted by the Landscape Ecology Group of the University of Oldenburg from 4th to 6th of March 2015. We will start the workshop by giving an introduction to path analysis and structural equation modelling (Wednesday, 4th of March). These statistical analyses are well suited to identify causal relationships between parameters, test ecological hypotheses for their significance and are able to deal with large datasets. The following two days will we dedicated to talks and posters presenting ecological research questions inferred from vegetation databases. ... [Information of the supplier]
B-VegAna (Vegetation edition and Analysis) is an integrated software package oriented towards the storage, management and analysis of ecological data. The package consists of several programs which can be run independently. It includes ten applications (Fagus, Quercus, Ginkgo, Yucca, Zamia, Taxus, Webherb, Wisteria WMS, Welwitschia and Araucaria). The first seven applications offer the opportunity for any user to manage biodiversity data in many interesting ways with an unified interface and data format, the last three apps provide webservices. After almost nine years of development they have become solid tools with a clearly defined added value. Examples for available applications are: (1) Ginkgo - multivariate analysis tool. Oriented mainly towards ordination and classification of ecological data, stressing methods based on symmetric matrices. (2) Quercus - a relevé table editor. It handles relevé data allowing the user to perform phytosociological works. (3) Fagus - floristic records editor. It can handle data coming from field surveys, bibliographic sources or collections. (4) Yucca - a cartographic plotting tool, that enables the user to plot taxa or syntaxa distributions. Taxon, syntaxon or bibliographic thesauri can be edited within the programs. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
The interactive keys allow the user to select which features of a plant to use for identification and in what order to use them. Our keys have been developed with the user in mind. They were created using Lucid, a program made by the Centre for Biological Information Technology (CBIT) at the University of Queensland. The dichotomous keys require the user to give information on features selected by the author of the key and in the order selected by the author. They were created using Phoenix, another program made by CBIT. The resulting keys are more flexible than printed keys because they allow users to skip leads, returning to the skipped leads later, if desired. Our Fact sheets contain high quality images, treatments, line drawings, and many other useful data. Many of our fact sheets also feature interactive Google Maps displaying global distribution data from GBIF. Our glossary contains succinct, useful definitions for botanical terms that you will encounter in our keys. We have included many high quality images to help illustrate the definitions. (The special focus of these resources in on monocotyledonous plants, esp. Poaceae and Cyperaceae.) ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
