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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.
Conceived as a collaborative research project to provide
access to habitat descriptions, photographs, observations,
nomenclature, distribution maps, and other data on California's wild
plants, Calflora is now the online gateway to information about
California’s wild plants. The database provides:
- comprehensive habitat and
distribution information for wild plants—over 7,660 native and
introduced species
- over 850,000 plant location
observations
- information on over 15,000
relationships between old and new plant names
- access to over 30,000
photographs of California plants in the CalPhotos database
(provided in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Digital Library
Project)
- online tools that help users
find, display, and download the information they need
Calflora serves a large and increasing number
of users, including professionals in a variety of fields,
researchers, scientists, students, environmental consultants, and
amateur enthusiasts. In
2002 alone, Calflora received close to one million queries from over
80,000 different Internet domains.
This remarkable success has established Calflora as the de
facto portal to wild plant information in California.
Calflora offers resources for informed, timely
approaches 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 and
appreciate the beauty and diversity of California plant life.
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