This U.S.- Argentina award will provide support for Dr. Paul E. Berry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his counterpart, Dr. Fernando O. Zuloaga of Instituto de Botanica Darwinion in San Isidro, Argentina, to combine the resources of both institutions to disseminate the results of a biological inventory data from the Misines Province in Argentina. Co-support for this project comes from the Biodiversity Surveys and Inventories Program.
The Pis will use a web site hosted by the Darwinion to provide online access to a detailed database of plant collections from the region. The Misiones Province possesses the largest remaining intact tracts of Atlantic forests that represent the greatest concentration of plant diversity in Argentina. The website will provide an intuitive interface based on species pages that will concentrate all available information on a given species. The site will include GIS mapping facilities to spatially display occurrences of species and vegetation types. They will use interactive online keys to facilitate identification of families, genera, and species from the Atlantic forests. This is one of the most diverse and threatened ecosystems in the world.
The expertise of these two respected botanical institutions will provide a model of disseminating botanical results, while providing training opportunities to U.S. graduate students involved in the project.
