Far West Floristic Initiative

FAR WEST FLORISTIC INITIATIVE

Proposal for a Collaborative Framework for a Distributed Information System for the Native and Naturalized Plants and Lichens of the Far Western States (California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada)

(Barbara Ertter, ertter@uclink4.berkeley.edu )
15 February 1999

OVERVIEW

In the present era, wide-ranging land management decisions have created an unprecedented demand for comprehensive and reliable information on our floristic heritage. Not only do traditional floristic compilations fail to provide the needed level of detail, but the resources required to address the significant information gaps (e.g., possibly 5% of our national flora still undescribed) currently receive little support. As a partial solution, this Initiative proposes to capitalize on web technology, essentially reinventing floristics, in a way that will not only make existing floristic information more widely accessible, but will also provide a framework within which support for addressing the information gaps can be successfully pursued.

The form this proposal takes is a flexible framework within which a diversity of more or less autonomous projects can develop in a coordinated fashion, with the goal of providing on-line information on the native and naturalized plants and lichens of the Far Western states (California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington), maintained as reliably, comprehensively, and up-to-date as possible. The component projects will mutually benefit not only by the sharing of resources, expertise, and developed products, but by their explicit connection to a large-scale undertaking of established societal relevance. The regional scale of implementation allows the framework to be fine-tuned to the individual needs and resources of the component regions, meshing with the sociopolitical realities of natural resource management in the Far Western states.

KEY ATTRIBUTES

immediate: once the basic framework is in place, existing information elements (e.g., new state records, references to newly described species) can be assembled to immediately create a valuable information resource, with minimal requirements for start-up time and resources.

modular; additional information elements can be created, assembled, and made accessible in whatever order or to whatever extent they are available, independent of the status of other components.

distributed; information elements maintained at most appropriate site, collectively linked by informational framework; capitalizes on existing on-line information sites and encourages the development of additional sites by the appropriate site-developer (e.g., monographic site by taxon specialist)

dynamic; information elements constantly updated whenever new information available (e.g., new species, significant range extensions, new illustrations)

quality-controlled; all information elements, including links to other sites, either generated or approved by network of appropriate specialists, backed by supporting data (i.e., vouchers); presentation of competing models is not only allowed, but encouraged.

attributed; full credit and responsibility for each information element, as well as theoretical underpinning, both explicitly attributed and readily determined

infrastructure-sustaining; usefulness of resultant product can be translated into essential support for the maintenance and further development of allcomponents of the floristic information infrastructure. This is particular critical for those essential components that currently receive declining support (e.g, primary data gathering, taxonomic analysis, voucher curation). "Support" is not limited to direct funding, but can also take the form of grant competitiveness, academic status, public relations value, personal satisfaction, and other motivational incentives that are an essential part of any viable long-term undertaking.

accommodating: actively acknowledges and works to accommodate the various motivational needs and restrictions of all participants and other stakeholders (e.g., private property owners), as essential to the goal of being as comprehensive and inclusive as possible. As a general corollary, standardization (of data structure, etc.) will be pursued when justified as a necessary means to an end, not as an end in itself.

CORE OPERATIONAL COMPONENTS

Board of Editors: Primary guidance and implementation would be provided by a Board of Editors for each state, consisting of a workable number (3‹8?) of persons who have both a significant personal familiarity with the flora of the state/region, and a working knowledge of taxonomic and floristic theory, techniques, and protocols.

Specialist Network: While the individual members of the Board of Editors will have their own areas of taxonomic and/or floristic expertise, the bulk of expertise will depend on a network of specialists who have agreed to be participants. Where expertise gaps exist, required information would either be provided by the Board of Editors or simply left vacant until appropriate expertise can be recruited., but it is hoped that the Framework, by drawing attention to the gaps, will encourage recruitment and support for the missing expertise.

If the proposed system is to function properly, specialist positions need to be developed beyond those currently provided by traditional faculty appointments in life sciences departments and the limited number of research appointments in natural history museums. Some possibilities could include:

Faculty appointments in non-traditional departments (e.g., resource management).

Grant-supported positions tied to long term floristic initiatives.

State-agency positions based at institutional herbaria, perhaps within an extension-services context.

Consortium-funded positions (e.g., created by the pooled resources of the agencies that most need the services of such positions)

Endowed chairs established by private bequest.

Fee-for-service positions (e.g., identifications, consulting).

Clearinghouse Website: The primary framework and entry point for collective information elements will be provided by a clearinghouse website for each state, to be developed and maintained on appropriate state-affiliated institutional servers with ensured long-term support.

The servers should also be prepared to house and maintain the other informational elements, but it is expected that a large percentage will exist in a distributed format on remote servers, linked to a master taxon list at the core of the clearinghouse site. An under-construction prototype for California can be viewed at http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/ jltemp.html.

Master Taxon List: Clearinghouse organization is dependent on the development and maintenance of a master taxon list for each state: a comprehensive, continuously updated list of all taxa accepted as occurring in the state. Within a rigorous scientific context, this is not simply a matter of compiling a list of reported names, with occasional additions of newly described species and new regional records, but would rather depend heavily on critical evaluation by the specialist network, with the Board of Editors coordinating efforts and addressing any gaps. In addition to the list of accepted species, all nomenclatural and taxonomic synonyms should also be incorporated and indexed so that queries under a synonym will take one to the treatment of the currently accepted name.

Distributed Information Elements: As with the master taxon list, the incorporation of distributed information elements (detailed elsewhere) will be subject to critical evaluation by the Board of Editors, with responsibility for areas of expertise delegated to the appropriate specialist. It is also expected that each region will link to many of the same sites for their component information elements (e.g., description and/or image of a taxon that occurs in both regions). An initial undertaking will be searching for existing sites that would make suitable links, with the stipulation that no links should be made without the knowledge and permission of the site developer.

To operate properly, distributed sites should be developed or modified to maximize their effectiveness as components of what will de facto become a "virtual flora," accommodating direct linkages to individual species treatments by including the following features:

direct links from individual species treatment page to supplementary pages (e.g., images, keys)

links to navigate elsewhere within site

each page clearly marked to indicate any use restrictions or crediting requirements

links to more information on site contributor (e.g., email address, biographical website)

On-Line Publications: The desirability of having the maximum number of information elements available in an on-line format must be balanced against the academic requirement that professionals publish in peer-reviewed publications, as well as any resultant copyright issues. The obvious solution is on-line peer-reviewed publications, either in addition to or instead of hard-copy counterparts. Several options relevant to the Initiative would be:

Modification of the on-line version of Flora of North America North of Mexico (FNA) to accommodate clearinghouse linkages directly to species descriptions, etc. Given the significant element of NSF support for this massive collaborative project, its evolution into a "master source" for multiple "virtual floras" should be both a legitimate and desirable expression of the original mandate. Parallel modifications for other significant floristic undertakings (e.g., The Jepson Manual, Intermountain Flora) are complicated by copyright issues, but might also evolve in this direction over time.

Existing peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Madrono) should be willing to have at least portions available on-line, especially if the resources to do so were provided by the Initiative. New species descriptions published in such journals could then be directly linked by clearinghouses, instead of merely cited. In those cases where a newly described taxon is not accepted by the appropriate specialists or Board of Editors, it can be linked to the entry in the master taxon list it is considered a synonym of, with an added entry summarizing the situation.

New electronic publication outlets can also be developed specifically in conjunction with the Initiative. In addition to on-line analogs of full-fledged peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Contributions from the XXX Herbarium), the electronic medium allows for a stripped down version for minor information elements (e.g., range extensions), with peer-review provided by the simple process of approval by the Board of Editors and/or appropriate specialist. A proto-prototype is temporarily located at http://128.32.109.44/NOTES.HTML.

Specialists might choose to maintain electronic treatments on personal websites, independent of the value added by formal peer-review but benefitting by greater control and potentially greater direct credit for their individual contributions.

GIS-Compatible Mapping Capability: Various efforts at converting massive quantities of vouchered and unvouchered locality information into GIS-compatible formats are currently under development (e.g., Oregon Plant Atlas). The optimum goal would be to take advantage of and combine the best elements developed by each project, potentially a major challenge but with the greatest long-term benefit.

One significant complication, resulting from the impossibility of verifying the correct identification and/or current identity of all reports (especially unvouchered ones), can potentially be addressed by involving the specialist network. Within their respective areas of expertise, the specialists should at least be able to quickly distinguish between tenable reports, those which probably represent misidentifications or misapplications of names, and those which are potentially interesting new records in need of vouchering.

The current proposal advocates the use of polygon-based floristic mapping units, possibly defined by the intersections of biogeographic and political boundaries (e.g., as used in Annotated Checklist of the East Bay Flora, Ertter & Morosco 1997), for the following reasons:

Even if more specific locality data is captured, presentation of distribution data in the form of floristic mapping units would bypass the much-debated question of the desirability of making explicit locality data widely available, while still allowing significantly more detailed and comprehensive distributional information than is available using larger polygons (e.g., counties or Jepson bioregions). This question has largely been raised in reference to the conservation of endangered and over-collected species, but might also be required for the incorporation of locality data from private landowners, consulting firms, and individuals concerned that reported sites would subsequently be targeted for commercial exploitation.

The data-gathering history of each floristic mapping unit can be recorded, to assist in distinguishing between "absence of evidence" and "evidence of absence," as well as tracking collecting efforts in general.

Floristic mapping units have the potential of encouraging regional para-professional data gathering efforts, by providing a framework in which the satisfying reward of obvious individual contributions to a large-scale undertaking would be readily generated and immediately apparent, in the form of first reports of species for each unit.

Herbarium Vouchers:Herbarium specimens represent the hard data that make plant taxonomy a repeatable science, by allowing the re-evaluation of the identical material on which earlier identifications and previous taxonomic and floristic models were based. Although the magnitude of the proposed undertaking requires that unvouchered reports are incorporated in plant distribution compilations, the scientific underpinning will nevertheless be provided by the collected holdings of herbaria within and beyond the Far West region. To expand this underpinning beyond the current pool of electronically accessible voucher information, the following need to be incorporated:

collections from the five-state region that have not yet been computerized (e.g, Oregon specimens in UC, specimens in smaller herbaria, significant holdings outside of the region)

unaccessioned collections in backlog storage, representing a significant quantity of currently inaccessible information, much of which is of greater value (e.g., by virtue of better locality detail) than that which is currently available electronically.

new collections from poorly collected areas, and to document significant populations (e.g., first reports of taxa within a mapping unit, potential representatives of undescribed taxa)

At present, limited funding options exist for the curation of existing specimens, the processing of backlog material, and the collection of new specimens from the Far West. It is hoped that the framework provided by this Initiative can be used to rectify this severely limiting situation.

Primary Data-Collecting Activities: Once the existing information becomes collated, it will become more apparent that significant primary data-collecting activities are needed to address the information gaps. These activities, largely taking the form of collecting activities and area checklist compilations, would significantly benefit from the following developments:

modernized protocols for determining what should be collected and in what quantities, including alternate documentation techniques for populations of taxa whose long-term viability would be compromised by the collection of a standard herbarium specimen.

refinement of existing permit systems, taking into consideration both the opportunistic nature of most collecting activities and the needs of land management agencies.

encouragement of para-professional data-collecting networks (e.g., within native plant societies), by the development of training opportunities, helpful resources (e.g., regional field guides), professional guidance, and appropriate incentives.

policies and incentives to encourage data-sharing from consulting firms and private landowners.

sufficient resources for the preparation and long-term curation of the resultant vouchers.

POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS

1) Universities (including key institutions in adjacent states, such as the Intermountain Herbarium at Utah State University)

2) Free-Standing Museums and Botanical Gardens

3) Floristic Projects

Authority-generated (e.g., Flora of North America north of Mexico Project)

Compilatory (.e.g, Biota of North America Project)

Local (e.g., county floras by enthusiasts)

Standard-developing (e.g., Taxonomic Data Working Group)

4) State Agencies

5) Federal Agencies

6) Regional, County, and City Agencies: (e.g., East Bay Regional Parks District,)

7) Tribal Agencies

8) Private Landowners (individual and corporate)

9) Non-Profit Organizations (e.g., native plant societies, California Botanical Society, California Exotic Pest Plants Council

10) Corporate Partners and Sponsors (e.g., environmental consulting firms, utility companies)

INFORMATION ELEMENTS
1) Nomenclature

Current lists of accepted taxa for each state

Comprehensive cross-referenced synonymy/equivalency

Comprehensive common names

Official agency codes

Formal bibliographic citation of basionyms

Formal citation of (and links to?) type specimens

audio pronouncing of names

etymology

2) Core monographic information

identification aids (i.e., multiple entry keys)

morphological descriptions

narrative discussion of problems

exsiccatae lists

digitized selected historical literature (e.g., original descriptions, Botany of California)

3) Images

Line drawings

Photographs (vouchered, or at least verified by specialist)

Habitat shots

4) Herbarium Specimens
a. Core data to capture (if data capture resources are a limiting factor)

herbaria housing voucher(s)

collector name & number

current identification

state and county

floristic mapping unit*

elevation

Date
b. Optional data

key locality words

complete locality data

geographic coordinates

determiner

complete annotation history

reproductive state (e.g., flowering and fruiting)

accession number

other label data

5) Distribution

vouchered localities

unvouchered reports (filtered and/or coded for reliability)

published range extensions (citations or links to electronic publications)

GIS-compatible maps

phenology (i.e., flowering time)

abbreviated ecology (e.g., substrate)

elevational range

Survey-density GIS layer

6) Special status information

Sensitive taxa (maintained by appropriate state agency)

Pest plants (maintained by appropriate state agency and/or organization; e.g., CalEPPC)

Ethnobotanical/Economically Significant

Horticultural?

7) Phylogeny/Biosystematics

Cladograms

Gene sequences

Chromosome number/image

crossing diagrams

8) Biographical Information (current and historical)

Current Specialists

Other authors

Collectors

Field notes

9) Links to other information (e.g., reproductive biology, anatomy)