«NEWS FOR THE SCIENTIFIC DEPARTMENTS OF NATURE RESERVES»

COMPUTER SYSTEM TO STUDY BIODIVERSITY

The Byelorussian Eco-Info NGO (Minsk) has developed a special computer system called Herbarium for inventorying and mapping of European botanical collections. The Herbarium system allows you to create computer databases of herbariums and other collections of vascular plants, mosses, water-plants, and mushrooms.

The program has been tested at environmental NGOs in Byelorussia, Russia, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania and elsewhere.

The system allows you to:

• make computer inventories of herbariums and other herbal collections, including scanning of photos;
• keep pictures of plants, their parts and places of their habitation;
• develop maps of natural habitats for Europe, a particular country or region;
• do sampling and data analyses (including distribution maps);
• prepare and print herbarium labels as well as texts and reference notes for images.

The database includes the name of the taxon, type of collection, systematic location of the object, synonyms, country, region, geographic distribution, ecological features, names of collection keepers and authors of definitions, collection data, additional comments and critical reviews.

Photographs and drawings of items may be added to the database. The system includes two maps of Europe (comparable to The Florae Europaeae Atlas and UTM). The user may also add any scanned map needed to map items in formats not related to the above-mentioned ones.

The system has an interface both in Russian and in English. Where necessary, it can be adapted to a specific user.

Minimal system requirements: IBM-PC Pentium 100 MHz, 16 Mb RAM; Windows 95, 98; screen monitor SVGA.

The system is distributed by a Byelorussian company that makes Golden Software products. For a free program demo or more information please write to one of the addresses below:

Internet: http://www.gsbelarus.com/herbarium/
E-mail: support@gsbelarus.com or oleg@biobel.bas-net.by

Special discounts are available for environmental NGOs.

Oleg Maslovsky, Pyotr Rodiononv, Evgenia Yaroshevich
Eco-Info, Minsk, Byelorussia

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