HERBASE - HOME (en)

THE RESEARCH NETWORK ON AMAZONIAN GROUND-HERB COMMUNITIES

The study of herb ecology & distribution in tropical forests has advanced in the last two decades but is still lagging behind studies of other biological groups, such as trees and vertebrates. Combining efforts to build large databases can boost biodiversity research and enable the macroscale analyses required to understand a world under global changes.

Filling this gap, HERBASE assembles data on abundances of herb species in plots of known size across the Amazon, as well as the complementary plot environmental data when available.  It thus provides the opportunity to investigate several large-scale questions, fostering our understanding of herb ecology and biogeography.

Taxonomic data is curated with the most updated sources and a committee decides on ambiguous cases. Metadata on plot location, size, shape, forest type, and minimum plant sampling size and habit is included for all datasets.

HERBASE is laid on the principles of equality among partners, where all contributors have the same rights to use the full dataset or parts of it. Check here the guidelines for contributing.

At the moment we have 30 collaborators and 1040 inventory plots included, besides 342 plots with metadata included and data available upon request directly to the PI. Check out the plot distribution map here<inserir link pg_mapa>.

This is a huge dataset, but several geographic gaps still need to be filled. If you have herb inventories in the Amazon or know who has, feel free to contact and join the effort! If you want to set up plots for herb inventories or conduct inventories in existing plots, check out our materials to support that and also feel free to contact us, we will be happy to assist.