Botanical Resources Available Online for the Colombian Flora

  • Richardson, James Edward (Investigador principal)
  • Alvarez, Esteban (Posdoctorante)
  • Pennington, Toby (Coinvestigador)

    Proyecto: Proyecto de Investigación

    Detalles del proyecto

    Descripción

    Plants and fungi are essential to global human well-being in both rural and urban areas, providing direct benefits to society and economic prosperity. They supply food, medicine, natural fibres, fuel, building materials and many other products, whilst indirectly benefiting humans through the ecosystem services they provide. Despite extremely high known biodiversity , there are limited formal data and knowledge on plants and fungi of Colombia, partly due to the long-running internal conflicts that have put some areas entirely off-limits to scientists until very recently, and partly because of the lack of digital resources. These projects will together provide an online data resource that can help to underpin the wider goals of the Colombia Bio programme, which are to address pressing issues in biodiversity science that underlie sustainable use of resources and continued delivery of ecosystem services. Key questions that need addressing by the broader Colombia Bio programme include how biodiversity changes over time, and how it contributes to the resilience of Colombian ecosystems, and of society, to global change.

    One aim of this project is to develop an authoritative, expert-driven, open access, online portal for Colombian Plants, with webpages for all the plant and fungal species reported in that country, including high-quality taxonomic information, links to type specimens from Kew and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and when possible descriptions, maps on geographic distribution, potential and traditional uses, sustainable practices, conservation status, links to photographs, and information on ecology and natural history.
    A second aim is digitization and identification of herbarium vouchers from permanent ecological monitoring plots, which are an essential tool in understanding how biodiversity reacts to global change. Improved identification of herbarium vouchers from permanent ecological monitoring plots and sharing of digitized images of them via open-access portals will ease significant bottlenecks to progress in both ecology and taxonomy in Colombia, increasing the pace of species discovery and description and addressing the difficulty of ensuring consistent and accurate species determinations within and among study sites, which are becoming increasingly important for prediction of ecosystem function.
    EstadoFinalizado
    Fecha de inicio/Fecha fin11/1/173/31/19

    Objetivos de desarrollo sostenible de las Naciones Unidas

    En 2015, los estados miembros de las Naciones Unidas acordaron 17 Objetivos de desarrollo sostenible (ODS) globales para erradicar la pobreza, proteger el planeta y garantizar la prosperidad para todos. Este proyecto contribuye al logro de los siguientes ODS:

    • ODS 5: Igualdad de género
    • ODS 10: Reducción de las desigualdades