The Vascular Flora of the Southern Rockies

The main repositories of baseline floristic diversity information are herbaria, botanical gardens and museum collections, in which species and genetic diversity are cataloged and stored. We are now developing a system of databases, accessible over the Internet, that will document and locate the vascular plant diversity that currently exists in the Southern Rocky Mountain Region (SRMR), and help track the rate and magnitude of change in biodiversity patterns caused by urban development over the next several decades. The database system will be useful for discerning areas of high biodiversity, determining the point of introduction and the spread of invasive species, locating voucher specimens, and as a coverage in geographic-information-systems applications.

In conjunction with database development, we are developing a series of interactive keys to the flora of the Southern Rockies, a toolkit for teaching and research that will be linked with up-to-date information from the database regarding known species distribution and other biodiversity data.

Participating Institutions

• Colorado State University Herbarium
• Rocky Mountain Herbarium at the University of Wyoming
• University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
• University of Northern Colorado Herbarium

This project is funded by a National Science Foundation grant (DBI-0237149) to M.P. Simmons (CSU), N. Snow (UNC), R.L. Hartman (UW), T.A. Ranker (CU), and R.P. Guralnick (CU).