FloVegSi - relation database for managing vegetation and related data

SELISKAR A.1, SELISKA R 2, VRES B.1, CELIK, T.1, SURINA B.1

1. Scientific Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Novi trg 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
2. Vrtna ulica 6, SI-9000 Murska Sobota, Slovenia.
E-mail: ' as@zrc-sazu.si;

The software package FloVegSi is based on a relation database designed in the Microsoft SQL Server and an applicability interface for work with data in Microsoft Access and Microsoft Visual Basic. In addition to reliability and capability, it makes feasible access to data by internet. The software package provides an opportunity for input, safe keeping and presentation of various data: vegetation releves, plant and animal inventories, ecological parameters, localities, habitats, photos, video records, references, as well as analysis and processing of releves, making vegetation tables or export to other applications (ARCVIEW, ARCINFO, MS ACCESS, MS EXCEL, MS WORD, TURBOVEG, SYNTAX, SPSS). Four published nomenclature sources can be used for entering or editing the names of plants (Flora Europaea, Phanart, Register of the Flora of Slovenia and Mala flora Slovenije, 3'd edition) and three unpublished catalogues (Turboveg for DOS, Central European checklist in Turboveg for Windows and the FloVegSi list, where 29,000 valid names and synonyms are unified from all the mentioned sources).

It is possible to enter separate relCves and relCves from the published tables in different formats, e.g. Br.-BI., Doing, Londo, Ordinal. Ordinations of vegetation tables offer several options: preparation of analytic and synoptic tables, sorting of species in tables according to synsystematic affiliation, calculation of average cover values, presence. It is possible to define the heading of tables very easily but in a complex way.

The application is supported by the GIS system, which includes multidirectional searching of releves and other data in geographical maps, an option to determine the coordinates of a location and basic drawing of polygons in the maps.

The general concept of the application FloVegSi is to cover the wider aspect of different groups of organisms and habitats. This system provides the opportunity for more complex analysis and studies, not only_of separated items but also of ecosystems or selected geographical areas. An analysis of rich fens and oligotrofic purple moorgrass meadows, and correlation with Europe's most endangered butterfly Coenonympha oedippus Fabricius, 1787 (Lepidoptera: Satyridae) will be presented. The appearance of the butterfly and threatened grassland plant species in wetland communities was studied in central Slovenia to determine the value of the butterfly as an umbrella species.