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Mission
The Calflora
Database is a nonprofit organization dedicated
to providing information about California plant biodiversity for use
in Education, Research and Conservation. Calflora is
structured as a digital library to fulfill the following
objectives:
- to serve as a repository for information on California wild
plants in electronic formats from diverse sources, including public
agencies, academic institutions, private organizations, and
individuals.
- to provide this information in readily usable, electronic
formats for scientific, conservation, and educational purposes.
- to serve public information needs related to scientific
study, land management, environmental analysis, education, and
appreciation of California plant life.
- to coordinate and integrate efforts towards these objectives
undertaken by scientists, public agencies, private organizations,
and members of the public.
Calflora was conceived as a collaborative research project to
collect and re-distribute information about
California's wild plants,
including
habitat descriptions, photographs, observations,
nomenclature, and distribution maps.
The database provides:
- comprehensive habitat and
distribution information for wild plants -- over 10,000 native and
introduced species
- 800,000 plant location
observations
- information on over 30,000
relationships between old and new plant names,
according to several authorities
- access to hundreds of thousands of
photographs of California plants in the CalPhotos database
(provided in collaboration with
Biodiversity Sciences Technology at UC Berkeley)
- online tools that help users
find, display, and download the information they need
Calflora serves a large and increasing number
of users, including
researchers, scientists, students, environmental consultants,
landscapers, and
amateur enthusiasts.
Calflora offers resources for an informed, timely
approach to biodiversity protection. Through Calflora, scientists,
citizens, and policymakers have quick and easy access to data they
need for analyzing species distributions, modeling spread of
invasive species, or identifying consequences of habitat loss.
Furthermore, Calflora provides a mechanism for citizens to
participate directly in building the information resources they
need, and gives all users an opportunity to learn about
the beauty and diversity of California plant life.
Calflora relies on contributors for the information it provides.
As you use the site, please remember the thousands of
individuals and institutions whose work is reflected here.
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Vision
Calflora
foresees emerging and growing needs for information related
to locally focused planning, education, and conservation. The decades ahead will be a period of rapid change
for California wild communities: increasing incidence of invasive
species and pathogens, climate change, environmental changes
associated with human population growth; all mean rapid changes in
species distributions and conservation status.
Calflora will serve
the need for rapid information exchange occasioned by this dynamic
picture. We want to put major effort into addressing these
requirements while maintaining our current strength as a library
for California plant information provided by major institutional
collaborators. Calflora's user community represents a broad range of
expertise and has a large capacity for volunteer involvement. We
hope to increase the role of volunteers in all aspects of development.
Habitat Planning, Restoration and Monitoring
We will be focusing efforts on further developing tools to
facilitate the participation of government agencies, environmental organizations and
citizen in building data resources that are relevant
to habitat restoration and conservation planning. We will refine
existing and develop new online tools that allow users to submit
data and images, review and annotate information, and use Calflora's
online infrastructure for data exchange within and among local
working groups. Calflora volunteers have tremendous interest in
developing new data resources for restorationists and native plant
gardeners. Expanding Calflora applications in this area will
coordinate well with improving resources and tools for locally
focused planning applications. Habitat Conservation Plans and
Natural Community Conservation Plans, county planning, urban creeks
councils, Weed Management Areas, watershed councils, bioregional
planning groups are examples of these kinds of efforts and user
communities.
Education and Citizen Involvement
Active participation is key to effective teaching both inside and
outside the classroom. In collaboration with partners, we will be
developing new interfaces that bring Calflora data and images into
K-12 science curricula and make good use of Calflora's data
submission capacity to provide students with opportunities to
actively engage with the broader world. Parallel efforts with
conservation partners will increase Calflora's role in 'citizen
science' programs by developing interfaces directed at providing
education and involvement opportunities for adult amateurs.
Maintain and Improve Calflora's Online Library
We will increase capacity so we can expand our network of
data collaborators, improve our database and interface
functionality, and make sure that our services keep in step with the
needs of our established user communities in science, land
management, environmental analysis, and conservation. We will
develop online tools for expert volunteer involvement in data
evaluation, annotation, and specialized data development.
We will make data available to researchers in a variety
of formats.
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