[ecoinfo] Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD) is online

[Jürgen Dengler]

Dear colleagues,

I am writing you today as a member of the international Steering Committee of the 
newly established Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD), which is 
available online at:

http://www.botanik.uni-greifswald.de/givd.html

This major initiative, which is supported among others by the Ecoinformatics 
Working Group of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS), aims 
at making metadata on as many vegetation databases around the world as possible 
available on one single platform in order to raise the awareness about this 
underestimated source of high-quality biodiversity data and to facilitate their use in 
joint research projects. 

Additionally, all databases that are registered by a certain date (see below) will have 
the opportunity to publish a "Short Database Report" (1-page with standardised 
information automatically generated from the database, without peer-review) or 
"Long Database Report" (up to 20 pages, with peer review) in the international (print 
and open access) journal "Biodiversity & Ecology" for free (similar to the concept of 
"Data papers" in "Ecology").

Already 78 databases from around the world and representing more than 
1,500,000 relevés have uploaded their metadata. Calculating with an average of 20 
species per plot, this means that GIVD presently represents approx. 30 million 
species records, all with compositional data and most of them with precise location, 
with environmental and structural data, i.e. an invaluable source in ecoinformatics 
that has the potential to greatly contribute particularly to macroecological research 
but also to applied questions as well as to complement tradition plant species records 
available via GBIF (and related platforms).

If you are interested in using the data registered in GIVD for your own research, 
we invite you to visit our homepage and test the search and analytical tools that are 
already there (we plan to extend the functionalities during the next time and hope for 
your suggestions).

If you host a vegetation database yourself (big or small, private or institutional, 
emerging or finished), we kindly invite you to upload your metadata - it will take 
less than 30 minutes, but contribute much to the visibility of your database and 
provide you with a citable reference to your database via the Database Report in the 
international journal "Biodiversity & Ecology".

While you can upload your data whenever you like, there are good reasons to do this 
soon as there are several relevant deadlines in the near future:

15 September 2010: data loaded by this date will be included in the meta-analysis 
for an article about the GIVD to be published in a Special Issue of "Applied 
Vegetation Science" on "Ecoinformatics and global change". Don´t miss that date 
because otherwise your country might appear white on the published global map of 
vegetation databases despite the existing data.

30 September 2010: you can publish a peer-reviewed "Long Database Report" in the 
Special Volume of Biodiversity & Ecology, where you may report on 4-20 full colour 
pages about the aims, the history, the concept, the content, and the applications of 
your database

15 October 2010: your metadata will be used to create automatically a 1-page "Short 
Database Report" to be published in Biodiversity & Ecology


If you have any questions or suggestions do not hesitate to contact me. If you know 
of other similar databases not yet included in our list, could you either provide me 
details of who I should contact regarding these data or forward this information to 
them on my behalf?

With kind regards,

Jürgen Dengler
in the name of the Steering Committee of the GIVD (Miquel de Cáceres [ES], Milan 
Chytrý [CZ], Jürgen Dengler [DE], Jörg Ewald [DE], Manfred Finckh [DE], Falko 
Glöckler [DE], Stephan Hennekens [NL], Florian Jansen [DE], Michael Lee [US], 
Laco Mucina [AU], Jens Oldeland [DE], Robert Peet [US], John Rodwell [UK], 
Joop Schaminée [NL], Nick Spencer [NZ])

-- 
Dr. Jürgen Dengler

Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology of Plants
Biocentre Klein Flottbek and Botanical Garden
University of Hamburg
Ohnhorststr. 18
22609 Hamburg
GERMANY

Phone: +49-40-42816-403
Phone private: +49-4131-935038
Fax: +49-40-42816-539
E-mail: dengler at botanik.uni-hamburg.de
Skype: juergen.dengler
URL: http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/bzf/fbha063/fbha063_e.htm

European Dry Grassland Group (EDGG): http://www.edgg.org
Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD): 
http://www.botanik.uni-greifswald.de/givd.html

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