|
|
- February 2005
-
Observation Contribution
is back! The new version of the system has features to
make it easy to enter entire checklists. Read the
FAQ.
Also, a new Observation Group Query
facility is introduced.
-
- September 2004
-
New Distibution Maps
The Calflora development server went down to a dramatic death
in August. With it went the ability to generate distribution maps.
A new distribution map generator was written using
Java Servlets and Tiger Map Server data. The generator
runs on a different hosting service, and its output is integrated
with the results of an Plant Observation query (yet another
way that Calflora site utilizes the notion of web services).
-
- June 2003
-
Hosting Service Roulette
In the middle of the month, Aplus.net threatened to terminate
service because of 'abuse of server resources' (i.e. too many
database queries). Bob Marsh, John Malpas, and Phil Lockwood
moved the site onto the Electric Embers hosting service without
signifigant interruption of service. Phil set up a development
server with Linux and MySQL at the Calflora office.
-
- May 2003
- Online Again
The majority of Calflora services were restored on May 27, 2003 at 9 PM.
-
-
- Calflora bids farewell to Technical
Manager Tony Morosco.
Tony has accepted a the position of Plant Collections Manager
at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens at Strybing Arboretum and
the Conservatory of Flowers at Golden Gate Park Starting June
2.
-
- April 2003
- Calflora Reloaded
Calflora volunteers and a few part-time staff have untertaken
an extensive project to port Calflora to a new system architecture
and format. The look and feel of Calflora will be preserved in
this transition, and our main goal is to resume services as soon
as possible. A team of dedicated volunteers is also crafting the
final touches on a buisness plan to sustain ongoing Calflora operations.
-
- March 2003
- Website Transition
The Calflora 'hibernation' website was successfuly transitioned
to a low-cost webhost service provider, Aplus.net. This ensures
that the Calflora web information will be available while fundraising
efforts continue. Volunteers are investigating the possibility
of hosting portions of the Calflora Database on such a provider.
-
-
- Calflora Development Committee
The Calflora Development Committee met on March 12, coordinating
fundraising strategies and efforts to bring Calflora back online.
Included in efforts are: Discussions with major botanical institutions
and organizations regarding the possibility of adopting Calflora
into a new institutional home; successful grant application to
the JiJi Foundation; Grant application preperation to the National
Science Foundation; Grant application invited for the National
Fish and Wildlife Foundation; Development work charachterizing
a "fair share" cost model for support of ongoing operations.
- Second Calflora Observer Newsletter
delivered.
February 2003
-
- Donations sustain Fundrasing and
'keeping lights on' at office
Generous contributions from individual users have enabled Calflora
to retain the services of two former staff members on a hourly
part time basis for criticle fundraising operations.
-
- Calflora Database and website backed
up for safe storage.
Funding for Calflora was exausted on January 31, 2003. All staff
have been laid off until such time as new funding is secured to
rehire them, if available. Without spending the effort to safely
back up this data and document it, bringing Calflora back online
would have been prohibitively expensive, if not outright impossible.
When funding is restored to rehire staff, and a new electronic
home (web and database server) have been secured for Calflora,
we estimate it will take only weeks instead of months to bring
Calflora back online. An estimate for the cost of creating Calflora
exceeds 1.8 million dollars.
-
- Newsleter- Calflora Observer
begins publication
This newsletter is available to donors and volunteers.
CONTACT
us
for details.
- January
2003
-
- Replacement funding not secured
for ongoing staff, office, and service costs.
Calflora staff carefully began a backup and archiving effort that
secures Calflora data for future use if funding can be restored.
This effort lasted from mid January to early February.
-
December 2002
Key funding falls through for first
quarter 2002. The Calflora website will go offline after January
31, 2003 unless operational funding can be secured.
A key piece of funding which would have secured operating expenses
for the first quarter of 2003 fell through at the last minute. Without
this funding, Calflora will be forced to lay off all staff and stop
providing services through the Calflora.org website on January 31,
2003 when existing funding runs out. Monthly operating expenses
in the first quarter of 2003 are $30,000 per month for basic operations.
In order to preserve the information contained in the Calflora Library,
an orderly shutdown process will begin mid January, to ensure that
Calflora can come back online at a future date.
In the past six months, Calflora recognized that it must reorganize
as an organization with greater operational and development capacity,
because it has not met its full potential in present form. We recently
held a constructive, well-attended meeting
to invite participation and ideas for how Calflora can be structured
to survive and thrive in the coming years. Unfortunately, we were
not able to make sufficient progress on this work before the unexpected
interruption in funding.
The Calflora Board of Directors and
volunteers are attempting to find funding to keep Calflora online.
The Board is also open to exploring strategic partnerships with
other organizations as a possible route to keep Calflora online.
Your contribution
can help Calflora bridge the funding gap and remain online during
this process.
Scientific information, species reports, distribution maps, synonymy
information, and the observation library will no longer be available
on the website if Calflora goes offline. Backup copies will be stored
for when funding can be restored. Photo resources on California
plants, including images donated from institutions, individuals,
and those facilitated by Calflora, will remain available through
the UC Berkeley Digital Library Research Project CalPhotos
website.
-
- November
2002
- Reorganization Meeting
Calflora hosted an assessment meeting. At the meeting, participants
learned that Calflora has reached the limit of what a 2- or 3-person
organization can do, and even to maintain the status quo we must
work together or risk losing this invaluable resource. Participants
had a lot of great, constructive ideas for how we should tackle
this challenge together, read the meeting
followup information for the top priorities.
-
-
- September
2002
-
Plant Observation Contribution System
Released
Now expert scientists, native plant enthusiasts and interested
amateurs can submit observations
of plant directly to Calflora. Click here and sign
up to submit observations. At the end of the first week,
38 people registered to submit observations, and we received
observations for 22 new county reports, 11 invasive weeds, and
4 rare plants. This information in invaluable to preserving
our native diversity. With your help we can provide a much better
information on California plants.
- August
2002
-
John Malpas joins the Calflora Staff
John joins us as a long time expert from the Information Technology
sector, and a more recent enthusiast of California native plants.
John is our third employee and will be working part time as
a member of our Technical Staff processing data for inclusion
in the Calflora library. John can be reached at
CONTACT
or 510/528-5426.
-
May 2002
-
 Sneak Preview- Plant Observation Contribution System
Calflora is moving in exciting new directions! Seen a new weed
in your county? Know where a local native species is that no one
else knows about? Report it to Calflora, and we'll add it to our
library of plant observations!
We are nearing completion on tools for the botanical community
to contribute observations directly to Calflora. After filling
out a registration form, users will be able to submit observations
one at a time, filling in distribution gaps, reporting new weed
infestations, and depositing observation information into a
rich and well used library.
We plan to develop additional tools to accept entire plant checklists,
data files, as well an early alert system and an annotation
system to allow experts to review the information gathered.
The new single observation contribution system will be tested
over the next few weeks to ensure reliability, and look for
public release this summer.
This new system requires additional staff and resources to
maintain and review the incoming information. Won't you consider
a donation now, to help bring this system online
and improve the quality of services Calflora provides you?
Photo
collection now illustrates over half of all 7,660 California
Plants.
- April 2002
- Calflora
remains an independent nonprofit organization.
Calflora will not be joining the California Academy of Sciences
as a new department as prematurely announced in the Academy's
publication California Wild. We look forward to continuing our
collaboration with the Academy on developing photo resources on
California plants and other joint projects. Calflora continues
to support services by raising funds from private foundations,
public agencies, and donations from
individuals like you.
- February 2002
-
12 February 2002 - Unexpected Downtime
Problems at our webhost caused Calflora to be offline overnight.
A operating system security patch installed by a contractor brought
down the server at 9 PM Monday. We are assured that the problem
has been corrected and the website was available again by 10 AM
Tuesday.
- December 2001
-
11,000 Common Names added or refreshed in Calflora.
Fred Hrusa (CDFA) sent in
an update for common names of California plants. Included are
over 11,000 common names for California plants, a sizeable increase
of 3,000 over the previous version. Please
CONTACT
us with any additional common names,
including a reference
to cite.
-
New Data Processing Server delivered
A Dell Poweredge 2550 was added to the Calflora office as part
of the transition to independent operations. This server will
house the behind-the-scenes data that makes Calflora work. It
will enable our staff to work more efficiently and process data
locally as we grow the plant resources available for users. We
hope to add a Data Processing Technician to our staff at our earliest
opportunity.
- October 2001
-
Calflora can help you scan and upload your slides or film negatives
to the CalPhotos Database.
Our volunteers will assist you in scanning high quality slides; please
CONTACT
us.
-
 9,000+ observations of yellow
star-thistle (Centaurea solstitialis) added from the Cooperative
Yellow Starthistle Mapping and Assessment Project
You can read the documentation on this dataset for details.
- See also:
-
- Taxon
Report for Centaurea solstitialis
-
all observations of Centaurea solstitialis from the
Calflora Occurrence Database (aprox. 4 minutes retrieval
time)
-
only new observations of Centaurea solstitialis (aprox.
3 minutes retrieval time)
- September 2001
-
Updated How to Donate Your Photos/Search
for Species that need Photos in Calflora.
Next
Advisory Board Meeting...
... is October 20, 2001, 2-4 PM, at the California Academy of
Sciences.
Negotiation
with the California Academy of Sciences...
...to partner with Calflora is still underway.
- August 2001
-
Read the results of the Calflora
Invasive Weeds Project on expanding information
access on Invasive weed species online (.PDF 300K).
-
Link
to Previous News Items... |
|
