Friday, July 3, 2015

California Botany Batting Average

The Consortium of California Herbaria database continues to grow.  The rate plot shown below suggests that for the past year the rate of additions has become constant.

Added are an average of 341 specimen records per day

The ability of individual botanists and governmental agencies to keep up with the constant, essentially relentless, addition of data suggests to me a PROBLEM.  We should not to stop adding records, but we do need a mechanism that new records get moved between platforms (vis. Calflora, CNDDB) instantly.

Conservation of the endemic rich California flora is dependent on good data.  Funding to support programming/application development that would result in real-time data ought to be a distinct objective that merits the attention of botanists.


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