GIS Information Report

[Walter Berendsohn]

Summary:
GIS Information Request

It took me some time to report on the reaction to my my
mid-february request for information on Gazetteers and GIS for
Europe, Cuba and El Salvador. I lost the files on the server,
but I kept printouts. However, it took some time to prepare
this..

George_Garrity at merck.com sent two addresses to contact for
topographical maps:

   McCarthy's Geographics, 404 Bloomfield Ave, Montclair, NJ 07042
      (201) 74407873
   Geoscience Resources, 1238 Anthony Rd., Burlington, NC 27215
      (919) 227-8300

I have not contacted them yet, but I will do so because up to
now this represents my only lead for El Salvador and Cuba.

   Rupert Wilson suggested to contact Bob Press and the BM,
   London. I did so and received a description of a Species
   Monitoring Database (SMD) program they developed at EPIC
   (European Plant Information Centre) in co-operation with the
   WCMC. Data can be output to serve for mapping in GIS like
   ARC/INFO and Atlas/GIS.

   Rupert also forwarded a message concerning a GIS system for
   Bulgaria. "It was designed for gap analysis and conservation
   planning and funded by US AID. The contractor was
   Environmental Systems Research International in Redlands,
   C.A." The GIS is located at the Bulgarian Academy of
   Sciences, Institute of Zoology.

   H. Turner (turner at rulrhb.leidenuniv.nl) described a dos based
   map-making program called KORT. It is said to be available at
   nominal cost from the author, Bertel Hansen,
   Botanical    Museum, Gothersgade 130, Copenhagen K,
   Denmark.
   Natasha Loder (nl at nhm.ic.ac.uk) and Richard Pankhurst drew my
   attention to Alastair Fitters Ecological Flora database. He
   told me that the database is accessible through the Bath Uni-
   versity Information and Data Service (contact: Dr. Henry
   Ford, H.Ford at uk.ac.bath.midge).
   N. Loder herself, together with her supervisor Kevin Gaston,
   have been working on a bibliography of distribution atlases
   from all over the world. She plans to make it available
   through biodiv-newsletter.

Apart from the information received via Internet, I made contact
with groups responsible for floristic mapping projects in
Germany. Databasing projects, co-ordinated by the
Bundesforschungsanstalt fuer Naturschutz und Landschafts-
oekologie in Bonn (contact: Rudolf May) are remarkably advanced
and currently administer several million observation records.
As comparable projects in Italy and French,
results and progress reports are published in the respective
language, which obviously greatly hinders the recognition of
their efforts. Floristic mapping projects in Germany have
recently been summarized in the volume "Grundlagen und Methoden
Floristischer Kartierungen in Deutschland", ed. by Haeupler,
Schoenfelder & Weinert, published in Flor. Rundbr. Beih. 2,
March 1992.


Please do continue to report related efforts to me. I'd also be
interested to know more about commercial (?) GIS packages
available, especially low-cost DOS or Windows programs.



Walter G. Berendsohn         BGBM Section EDP and Documentation
wgb at zedat.fu-berlin          Tel.: +49 30 83006 -143, FAX: -186
      Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem
       Koenigin-Luise-Strasse 6-8, 14191 Berlin, Germany