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Calflora Update: January 2006
2005 was a great year for Calflora! We greatly expanded our
collection of data about wild plants in Calflora and imporved our
tools for understanding that data. 2005 was capped by a generous gift to underwrite all personal Calflora subscriptions and renewals in 2006.
This is a brief update on what Calflora accomplished in 2005, what we
are planning in the coming months, how you can help Calflora have an even better year in 2006.
2005 ACCOMPLISHMENTS
New Data.
Numerous groups shared new or updated data with you through Calflora:
- The UC Riverside Herbarium contributed over 60,000 records; a very
high percentage of these observations have specific point locations
associated with them, so they appear as points in the new Calflora Map Viewer
- East Bay CNPS Rare and Unusual plants (over 16,000 records)
- CNPS Inventory data: Current again, as of October 2005, and now on a quarterly update schedule
- Cal-IPC plant list updated
- UC Santa Cruz Herbarium (over 3,000 records)
Observation Submission.
We rewrote and restored the web-based Calflora system you can use to
submit your own observations of plants to share with other Calflora
users. We've tried to make this version particularly useful for folks
with lists of plants they've observed on trails, parks, and other
areas. See
http://www.calflora.org/add/pofaq.html
to learn more.
We're also always happy to work with anyone who has data in their own
databases: Converting data to the Calflora standard is a specialty.
Map Viewer.
We greatly enhanced the Calflora mapping tools, and introduced the
Calflora Map Viewer (see
http://www.calflora.org/about-viewer.html
for details, plus sample maps):
- Added relief maps as a background to observation points and
regions, which you can zoom in and out of, move, and add optional
layers of data
- Added Holland / GAP regions to maps; this is valuable as context
for observations, and also as a demonstration of the Calflora map
viewer's ability to import and display large sets of polygon data
- Added point display to maps
- Added East Bay Bioregions to maps, for use with the EB CNPS Rare and
Unusual plant database.
- Added "quads" to maps: Searches that include CNPS or other sources
of data that resolve to USGS topographic map quads are displayed as
rectangles in the map viewer
Web Site Improvements.
We also performed a number of other web site improvements:
- We improved the links on our taxon pages to such locations as the
online CNPS Inventory and to Cal-IPC
- We expanded our ability to validate users by their IP networks, and
a number of locations arranged to subscribe this way (such as the UC
Santa Cruz library): Users on their networks access Calflora without
passing through the registration system.
2006 GOALS
We have a number of plans for 2006, many of which are already under way.
More data!We have begun discussions with several large data holders about sharing their plant-observation data with you through Calflora. As always, making more data available to Calflora's users is our first priority.
Web User Interface.
We're looking at our web-based user interfaces and will work to make
them more intuitive for you to find the information you're looking
for. In particular, we hope to make it easier to use our new mapping
tools as a starting point for location-based queries: What's rare
near my house or in a specific town or park?
Map Viewer Features.
We're planning to add additional layers of information to the Map
Viewer, such as towns, parks, soils, and other geographic data.
Also, the resolution of the relief maps at the closest
zoom levels should increase noticeably.
Other Local Floras.
We hope to work with two to four CNPS chapters or
other organizations with local flora projects to use Calflora as a tool to
help collect and disseminate data about the flora of a county or other region.
Weeds.
We have started contacting regional weed management
areas and others weed specialists to make Calflora a more powerful tool for collecting and sharing information among those engaged in the battle against invasive exotics in our state
Funding.
Discover a few new sources of funding so we can keep Calflora
flourishing: Our subscription model is a great base, but we still
have an annual gap in our budget.
HELP CALFLORA
If you support Calflora's mission,
there are many ways you can help Calflora flourish:
- Spread the word that there's no charge again to subscribe to Calflora as a
personal user
- Make a donation to help keep Calflora alive (our subscription model
is not sufficient to meet our small budget, we are very dependant on
your generosity to bridge that gap)
- Volunteer to learn how to add data sets to Calflora, to help with
fundraising, to enhance the Map viewer, do some bookkeeping, or to help in other ways
- Encourage folks with plant-observation data to share it through
Calflora: Do you know of an herbarium, science museum, local CNPS
chapter, or individual with data that you think Calflora's users
would find useful? Ask them to get in touch with us.
(Location checklists are a priority this year.)
- Write to Brent Mishler ( bmishler at calmail.berkeley.edu ), director of the UC and Jepson Herbaria, and ask him in the friendliest possible way to resume sharing their SMASCH database with Calflora's users. If you send the Jepson folks email, please cc us ( support at calflora.org )
- Suggest your local public library or school contact us about
IP-based validation: This free service makes is possible for users at such institutions to
bypass our registration system when they visit the Calflora web site
- Tell us how we can make Calflora more useful to you
- Get involved with Calflora staff and volunteers to help
shape future policies and priorities
CONTACT US
We're always eager to hear your ideas about Calflora.
You can write to us by
email,
or send us U.S. Mail at:
The Calflora Database
1700 Shattuck Ave. #198
Berkeley, CA 94709
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