Calflora Update: December 2007

Calflora's Mission

• Assemble the broadest possible collection of information about California's wild plants
  
• Make the collection accessible to the widest possible audience

Recap: 2007 Goals

• Add watersheds to the map viewer

• Observation annotation

• Continue to add location checklists from individual botanists and CNPS chapters

• Develop and Introduce the What Grows Here interface

• Add CNPS Veg Committee data we previewed to you in Dec. 2006

• Increase use and revenue...

Calflora Accomplishments in 2007

• Leap in use of Calflora after loosened registration requirements

• Tens of thousands of checklist observations added or updated

• USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service's eVeguide on the web

• What Grows Here?

2007 Registration and Use

We relaxed the requirement to register to view pages that most users reach first, via Google and links to pages from other web sites. The results:

• Registrations Dropped from about 6000 users in 2006 to about 2200 users this year. Downside is that folks who don't register don't donate...

• Daily use has jumped! From 1,800 visitors and 14,000 queries per day in 2006 to 14,000 unique Visitors and 30,000 queries per day in 2007
  

  

• Calflora Continues to be Free to Amateurs and Volunteers
  Thanks to an anonymous donation, Calflora was free to amateurs and volunteers in 2007

• 12 Organizations have IP-based Access
  
  

• Overview NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service), a part of the USDA, offers technical assistance to private land owners and managers concerning the conservation of soil, water, and other natural resources.

  The VegGuide is a tool for finding plant alternatives based on specific NRCS land conservation practices for a particular MLRA (Major Land Resource Area). It provides lists of alternative plants, as well as seed and planting recommendations.

  Several years ago, the VegGuide was in the form of a 4 inch binder. NRCS California converted the information into a database, and in 2007 hired Calflora to make a web application out of the database, called the eVegGuide. The application makes plant recommendations for a variety of conservation practices, taking into account soil type, rainfall, etc.. Many of the recommended plants are California natives. The application links all plant recommendations to both the Calflora website and the USDA PLANTS website. Thus far, the application covers only one MLRA in California, but will be expanding in the future to cover the other sixteen.

  Example Results Page

What Grows Here?

• Overview What Grows Here is a new Calflora project which emphasizes what plants have been observed growing near a particular place. Through this interface, users can pick a place in Calfornia by any of several different approaches (eg. by town, zip code, watershed, park etc.). Results are displayed in a list (with or without photos), and as points on a relief map.

  Previously, Calflora has specialized in answering the question "Where does this plant grow in California?" -- by returning photographs, tables of observation data, and other information about a specific plant. This project seeks to answer the complimentary question "What grows here?" for any particular location.

• Uses
  • A home owner can find out what grows on or near her property, as a source of inspiration for locally appropriate landscaping

  • A restorationist can build a list of plants suitable for a project site, and then follow links to the California Native Plant Link Exchange to find local nurseries that can provide those plant materials

  • A community group can view the list of rare or significant plants occurring in the area of a proposed development

  • A hiker can print out a plant list before a trip to a state park or open space area

• Where to start To use the application as a wizard, begin here: What Grows Here?. (Begin by choosing what here is going to mean -- for instance, in or near a town, within a zip code, in the watershed of a particular creek, etc.)

  Another way to start is on the Find a Location in California page, where you may enter a name, county, or feature, and choose from a list of matching entries.

• Examples
  Mount Diablo [rotate through watersheds, parks, zip codes, and quads ]

  Sonoma Mountain

2008 Goals

• More Open Space Areas, Parks and Reserves for the Map Viewer There are a number of counties for which we do not yet have county parks. We are promised much better creek data for the Bay Area from partners at the Oakland Museum.

• More Location Checklists to Fill in the Gaps The What Grows Here? interface makes it apparent that certain areas suffer from a lack of data. In some cases, the area has just not been studied. In other cases, it has been studied, but Calflora does not have access to the data. We need your help!

• Add stewardship groups, restoration sites etc. to What Grows Here?. Susan Schwartz with the Friends of Five Creeks has some good ideas in this regard. For stewarship groups that have a website, we plan to suggest links to What Grows Here? that will reveal the flora of their area of interest.
• Large Data Sets We're are working on an MOU with CNPS to update the CNPS Inventory data and to start to publish the Vegetation Committee data on Calflora (see the 2006 page for an example of the richness of this data. We have also had promising discussions with the CCH about adding better links to their approx. 1 million herbarium records.

• Better Integration with CNPLX We applied for and did not receive a grant to better integrate John Malpas' nursery-availability data from http://www.cnplx.info into Calflora. We will try again this year.

• Expand USDA/NRCS Offering More MLRAs, more integration with Calflora, particularly into What Grows Here?

• Observation Annotation Allowing users to annotate observations is a continuing project.

Contact Us

You can write to us by email, or send us U.S. Mail at:

The Calflora Database
1700 Shattuck Ave. #198
Berkeley, CA 94709