Namibian Near-Endemic Plants Project - First Species Information Online
Information for the first 137 near-endemic plant species has been uploaded onto the Environmental Information Service website. These are the species from Acacia montis-usti to Commiphora anacardiifolia if you filter on near-endemic species and sort by species on the Plant Information System (http://www.the-eis.com/atlas/?q=plant-information-system).
It has been a steep learning curve for us all to get to this point. The procedures we used to gather information, analyse and database it, had to be adjusted time and again. The patience and never wavering enthusiasm of Sofia Amakali in re-doing, updating and changing things in the data gathering process, must be acknowledged here. The biggest challenge was getting the database to spit out the information in the desired format. Here we are particularly grateful for the assistance from Denis Filer, one of the developers of the BRAHMS database at Oxford University. Now that we have streamlined our workflow, we plan to add about 70 more species information sheets every three months to the website. Everything is not perfect yet and we hope for feedback from users to further improve our outputs.
Plant Information System: News
FIRST RESULTS ONLINE
12 March 2024
TAKING PHOTOS OF PLANTS
21 December 2023
Identifying plants can be challenging and even more so from photos. For many grasses and sedges identification from photos is impossible because microscopic features often determine the difference between species. For most plants a single photo is usually not enough for positive identification. Take a look at this document for tips about taking photos.
NEAR-ENDEMIC PLANTS PROJECT COMPETITION
11 October 2023
WE NEED YOUR HELP
The NCE’s Near-Endemic Plants Project is preparing information sheets about Namibia’s near-endemic plants.
These sheets will be available online through the Namibian Environmental Information Service - EIS.
We need your help in getting photos of near-endemic plants – a list of which you can find on the EIS’s Plant
Information System by filtering for “near-endemic”. The JRS Biodiversity Foundation has made available prize money
for the persons that submit the most records and photos of near-endemic plants to the EIS’s Indigenous Plant Atlas.
1st prize = N$3000 2nd prize = N$2000 3rd prize = N$1000
5 consolation prizes of N$425 each
Rules:
Competition closes on 31 August 2024
Records and photos must be submitted to the Indigenous Plant Atlas on the EIS
Only records of near-endemic species will be counted
A species will be counted only once per quarter-degree square per atlaser
At least 50% of near-endemic plant records submitted, must have a useable photo attached
The atlaser must agree to the photo being used on the information sheet that will be put online (with due acknowledgement)
For any queries, please contact the project at boscia@afol.com.na
PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT
13 July 2023
The NCE is pleased to announce that it was successful in obtaining funding from the JRS Biodiversity Foundation (https://jrsbiodiversity.org/) for a project “Better information for better conservation, restoration and sustainable use - focusing on Namibian near-endemic plants”. The aims are to bring together all existing data from a variety of sources throughout the world, analyse and summarise these for placement on the Plant Information System website of the Environmental Information Service (EIS).
This information will be freely accessible and will be useful for many practical applications, like environmental impact assessments, conservation and restoration actions or sustainable use of plant resources. Namibian botanist, Herta Kolberg, will be leading this project and in the process transfer much of her accumulated experience and knowledge to the younger generation of plant scientists. To accomplish this huge task we decided to start with the near-endemic plants, of which the larger part of their distribution range lies within Namibia with a smaller portion in Angola or South Africa. The project started in mid-May 2023 and will run for 30 months.
Watch this space for further developments!!