A Web interfaced database for biogeographical and ecological analyses

The Maritime Alps were identified by Médail and Quézel as one of the ten maximum biodiversity Mediterranean areas, and following studies have confirmed their significance and major characteristics. This southern parte of the Alpine chain is distributed both on the Italian and French territory. With the development of European community policies the need for sharing knowledge and data is today an important priority for the elaboration of common environmental management strategies. The purpose of this project is to create a database for a georeferenced collection of flora recordings. Such recordings form the basis for a decision support system which settles in an objective way the importance of the relatioships between a particular area and a taxon or a group of taxa. The conceptual model of the database contains both information on the different plants, such as taxonomical and ecological features (habitat, altitudinal belt, soil and moisture requirement, etc.), and data about the territory where they live or not, such as the environmental features of each OGU (bioclimate, glacial events, lithological composition). An interface with Web architecture was developed in order to permit the consultation, modification and update of the database also in long distance collaboration among institutions. Two user typologies have been implemented with distinct access modalities and permissions: administrator and external user. The users throughout a guided procedure may upload some files: taxa description, ecological matrix of the geographical area of interest and matrix based on presence/absence of plants in the grid cells. Such guided procedure will end with the analyses necessary for the identification of the areas of endemism and will supply information about the species and their biogeographical relationships.