About Visual Plants
  Scientific idea
  Biodiversity informatics
  Related projects
  Links related to biodiversity
  Acknowledgements
  Technical information
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Visual Plants © Copyright 2002
 

Scientific idea for the development of Visual Plants

We developed Visual Plants as a data capturing tool in the field.

Although the dissemination of biodiversity Information is necessary to be proceeded in the World Wide Web, there is a need of information systems based on databases directly in ecological field stations in the tropics, which are not connected to the internet.

In a second step Visual Plants is now accessible on the internet using the integrated web server of the RAD tool we used.

Further on we present a system for biodiversity information which is not only based on images of herbarium specimen, but also on images of "green plants" (images made by flat bed scanners or digitized slides) and by herbarium specimen as well. This system may also include the ability to determine plants into taxa using vegetative characters (so far it is possible). This might be helpful for students to get an idea to which family or genus a plant belongs. Even the classical way of determination the plants can be used. The images may also be useful to control classical determinations. 

Visual Plants can be used
 
»  in the field on laptop computers,
»  for the training of students before travelling in tropical regions,
»  as database in three research regions (RBAMB, Costa Rica; ECSF, Ecuador and Kakamega, Kenya).

For these regions we collected now around 22000 images mostly with geo-referenced information within the research projects.

We work closely together with local experts and share the database information with the local institutions.

Further information:
Dalitz, H. & Homeier, J. (2004): Visual Plants - An image based tool for plant diversity research. Lyonia, 6(1), 47-59.
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