The West African Vegetation Database was created to address the limited availability and lack of digitization of vegetation data in West Africa. The database enhances digitization, facilitates data sharing, and identifies gaps to avoid redundant work. It is developed through collaborations between universities and research institutions. The database currently holds over 358,000 vegetation records. Future plans include establishing more botanical resources, conducting regional analyses, and integrating with global databases.

1. The West African Vegetation Database:
incentives for collaborative data pooling
Marco Schmidt, Thomas Janßen, Mipro Hien, Souleymane Konaté,
Anne Mette Lykke, Ali Mahamane, Bienvenu Sambou, Brice Sinsin,
Adjima Thiombiano, Rüdiger Wittig & Georg Zizka
19th AETFAT congress, Antananarivo, 25-30 Apr 2010

2. Outline
• Background
• Objectives
• Projects / Partners
• Database Features
• Data holdings
• Perspectives

3. Background
• Present state of vegetation data in West
Africa
– limited availability
– lack of regional exchange
– low degree of digitization
• Urgent need of such data in times of
rapid environmental change

4. Objectives
• enhance digitization and improve data
security
• increase availability and visibility of
vegetation data for West Africa
• facilitate exchange and regional
analyses
• identify data gaps and avoid redundant
work

5. Projects / Partners
• BIOTA (Biodiversity Transect Analysis in Africa) and
SUN (Sustainable Use of Natural Vegetation in West Africa)
– Development and Coordination:
Senckenberg Research Institute
– Universities of Ouagadougou, Cotonou,
Niamey, Dakar, Abidjan, Bobo-Dioulasso,
Aarhus and Frankfurt, Biodiversity and
Climate Research Centre

6. Database Features
• Various kinds of relevés
– species inventories
– phytosociological relevés
– dendrometrical relevés

7. Database Features
• Local offline database VegDa 3.0
– local Access db allows editing in working environments
without internet connection
– synchronisation with online database

8. Database Features
• Access Rights Management
– each relevé can be declared „private“, „public“ or „shared
with selected users“

9. Database Features
• Search and export data
– metadata visible for all relevés (including „private“ data)
– comfortable data clipboard
– various export options (local db, crosstables for community
analyses, species occurrence files for GIS and ENM
programs)

10. Data Holdings
• presently entered in local db:
Partner Releves
Phyto
Records
Phyto
Releves
Dendro
Records
Dendro
Releves
Total
Records
Total
Aarhus 1131 3079 4649 12117 5780 15196
Cotonou 917 39556 482 17968 1399 57524
Dakar 0 0 452 7439 452 7439
Frankfurt-SGN 5061 120756 0 0 5061 120756
Frankfurt-Uni 817 18711 154 1537 971 20248
Niamey 1097 21351 131 36740 1228 58091
Ouaga 2293 38922 800 40029 3093 78951
Total 11316 242375 6668 115830 17984 358205

11. Perspectives
• finish last tests and launch final version
soon!
www.westafricanvegetation.senckenberg.de

12. Perspectives
• establish a comprehensive suite of
botanical resources for West Africa
www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de
further db modules, e.g.
- functional traits
- plant use

13. Perspectives
• regional analyses of biogeography,
biodiversity and phytosociology
• studies on climate / land use change
impact on food plants, pastures, ESS
• integration in global vegetation
databases

14. Acknowledgements
• BMBF (BIOTA – funding code 01LC0617D1)
• EU-FP6 (SUN – funding code INCO-031685)
• Hesse (BiK-F)
• all data contributors and local
coordinators

15. Thank you for your kind attention!
Would you like to contribute? Contact us!
westafricanvegetation@senckenberg.de