Corresponding author: Wouter Van Landuyt (
Academic editor: Vishwas Chavan
Florabank1 is a database that contains distributional data on the wild flora (indigenous species, archeophytes and naturalised aliens) of Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region. It holds about 3 million records of vascular plants, dating from 1800 till present. Furthermore, it includes ecological data on vascular plant species, redlist category information, Ellenberg values, legal status, global distribution, seed bank etc. The database is an initiative of “Flo.Wer” (
The occurrence data contained in Florabank1 are extracted from checklists, literature and herbarium specimen information. Of survey lists, the locality name (verbatimLocality), species name, observation date and IFBL square code, the grid system used for plant mapping in Belgium (
All data in Florabank1 is georeferenced. Every record holds the decimal centroid coordinates of the IFBL square containing the observation. The uncertainty radius is the smallest circle possible covering the whole IFBL square, which can measure 1 Km? or 4 Km?. Florabank is a work in progress and new occurrences are added as they become available; the dataset will be updated through GBIF on a regularly base.
GBIF:
Note: The taxonomic reference for the florabank1 database is the 1998 edition of the Belgian Flora by
The coverage (
Taxonomic coverage of Florabank1
1800–2011.
The spatial coverage of the territory has evolved through time. The data from the period before 1939 pertains mostly to herbarium specimens and reflects only part of the vascular plant composition of the region. From 1939 onwards most observations are collected using a standardized protocol based on the methodology used for the Atlas of the flora of Belgium and Luxemburg (
Number of prospected 1 km? grids in each grid of 4?4 km for the period 1939–1971. A 1 km? grid cell is considered as prospected if at least 90 species have been recorded.
Number of prospected 1 km? grids in each grid of 4?4 km for the period 1972-2004. A 1 km? grid cell is considered as prospected if at least 90 species have been recorded.
All records are validated before they are added to Florabank. The basic reference for quality control is the Belgian atlas (
The Florabank1 dataset is a custom made SQL view of the Florabank database hosted in the Research Institute for Nature and Forest. The view shows only those data that are accepted for publication in the Darwin Core standard. Fields given are: occurenceID, modified, language, institutionCode, collectionCode, basisOfRecord, catalogNumber, recordedBy, occurrenceDetails, eventDate, country, verbatimLocality, verbatimCoordinates, verbatimCoordinatesystem, decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, geodeticDatum, coordinateUncertaintyInMeters, scientificName, originalNameUsage, taxonRank, verbatimTaxonrank and nomenclaturalCode.