Official Home Page of the Biota of North America Program (BONAP)
NEWS (January 2010):BONAP releases its web-based, U.S. County-Level Atlas of the Vascular Flora of North America. BONAP’s web version of the U.S. County-Level Atlas has been developed for the contiguous forty-eight U.S. states. Although our voucher documentations of the 4.5 million U.S. county occurrences are not shown here, they will be included within the release of Floristic Synthesis scheduled later this year. Plant species restricted to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Greenland, St. Pierre and Miquelon are shown at the state or equivalent only and are illustrated via unique state-level based maps (e.g., Abelmoschus moschatus). We have also chosen not to include our Caribbean Island distribution records of Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands, since those too will be included within the Floristic Synthesis. Plant species maps for which county-level occurrence records appear to be lacking result from their county occurrences being too few or the individual counties too small to be visible on the maps provided. Too, in some cases the county-level locations are currently unknown to us. All of these records will be viewable with the zooming capability provided within the Floristic Synthesis. Also, rarity fields shown in yellow, red or orange, must be considered DRAFT, since we are currently updating these fields. To access the map-display most rapidly, we suggest using Google Chrome or Internet Explorer as your browser. All of these maps, plus 100,000 additional digital plant images of the North American flora will be provided later this year on ourNorth American Digital Flora.
You may see a security warning when you attempt to open the National Wetland Plant List or the North American Digital Flora. There is no security risk from the site. The warning pertains to the fact that it is a secure website for entering personal information; however, the security of the connection cannot be confirmed by your browser. Since personal information is not being asked by the site, the message is irrelevant. Please just accept certification and the website will launch.
NEWS (February 2010): BONAP, in collaboration with the Army Corps of Engineers, launches its revolutionary new Floristic Gazetteer. Never before in any country, domestic or foreign, has it been possible to select random locations on the landscape and produce comprehensive plant species lists for that area. With this most recent jointly developed release, which merges Google graphics into BONAP's phytogeography, it is now possible to produce extremely comprehensive summaries of plants for any geographic location in North America!!!.
From private farms or private woodlots, to small towns or large cities; from National Parks, and National Seashores to U.S. states and Canadian provinces, lists of plants can now be produced easily, accurately and comprehensively for that area. Even for home-sites with personal mailing address or for local school grounds, or for areas with specific longitude and latitude coordinates, lists of plants can be generated with ease and precision. In order to achieve this accomplishment, BONAP incorporated tens of thousands of plant lists from small florulas throughout North America into larger floristic units, then linked these data with U.S. postal zip codes, and then to FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) codes, then to longitude and latitude coordinates, and finally to all of the North American place names on Google map. By using Google map as our search engine, we were able to produce the Floristic Gazetteer. Moreover, by using expanding concentric quadrangles, we were then able to expand the floristic coverage of any location outward by 10 - 20 or more miles, thus increasing the number of potential species found within adjacent locations. To facilitate the entire process, an embedded spell-checker was used to correct automatically typographical errors of locations without altering results. Although the system currently treats only members of National Wetland Flora (approximately half of the North American flora), we plan to include the entire North American flora later this year. The Floristic Gazetteer can be found within the Geographic Query window (Place Name or Zip code under Select Geo Type) on our North American Digital Flora.
The potential for this release is limitless. Consider for example, the inclusion of an interactive key that collapses to adjust for only those species found within a specific area. This process would facilitate greatly the task of identifying unknown member of the local flora. It would certainly ease the effort of keying by reducing the number of species found within any location. In testing the accuracy of the Floristic Gazetteer, we found that even in poorly collected areas, species diversity tallies can be made surprisingly complete by using the concentric quadrangle to expand the search into adjacent locations.
NEWS (February 2010): BONAP initiates the building of our interactive web-based key for the North American flora. As an adjunct to the Floristic Gazetteer, BONAP is building a web-based interactive key that will link plant morphology, plant ecology, plus hundreds of additional characters and charactennnr states of the North American flora with our locality data. Incorporated into this key will be BONAP's vast photographic gallery. With each selection of the key, the number of species and their linked images will reduce concurrently. One could then simply compare the remaining images with the unknown plant being keyed. Our goal is to produce keys so efficient that even a caveman can use them!
NEWS (February 2010): BONAP/Army Corps of Engineers releases its Custom Plant List capability. Perhaps equally interesting to some is the initiation of BONAP/Army Corps of Engineers Custom Plant Lists. With this feature, it will be possible to prepare species-list of National parks, National Seashores, U.S. military bases, National Forests or even vacant city lots. Our plan is to enable users to post their own custom plant list on our website so that only those plants (not plants of the surrounding flora) will be linked automatically to our website. By entering the species list file into the website, the data will be linked to the identification key, image gallery, etc. As an example of what can be done, we have entered a plant list for Eagle Hill, a well-known biological field station in eastern Maine. The Custom Plant Lists capability can be found within the Geographic Query window (Custom Plant List under Select Geo Type) on our North American Digital Flora. We plan to add additional custom plant lists for various locations very soon.
NEWS (January 2010):BONAP posts its classification structure for all North American family/genus relationships in Phylogenetic, Traditionaland Modern listings.
NEWS (updated January 1, 2010): BONAP updates its North American Digital Flora for National Wetland Plant List. BONAP, in concert with the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, launched, in DRAFT version, it's North American Digital Flora, with the initial release of the National Wetland Plant List early in 2009. This website, which has just been revised (January 2010) treats approximately 10,000 wetland plant species or nearly half of the entire North American vascular flora. It, along with our U.S. County-Level Atlas of the Vascular Flora of North America, represents the largest collections of phytogeographic county-level maps ever produced for the United States, (including 4,500,000 county-level records) and is certain to be one of the largest collection of digital images. All new county and state phytogeographic records will also be presented here as they become known. We welcome all comments.
NEWS (January 2010): BONAP posts its initial release of the North American Digital Floristic website. For a decade and a half (from 1990-2004), BONAP was contracted by USDA/NRCS database PLANTS to provide nearly all of their data, including state and county plant distributions, common and scientific names, biological attributes, etc. However, given the NRCS’s focus on having a strong agricultural orientation, BONAP has decided to establish its own North American Digital Flora website to provide timely botanical data and information. Working closely with over 2,000 contributors in herbaria, museums, universities and other institutions and organizations, along with hundreds of floristic experts throughout North America, BONAP is in the process of producing a North American Digital Flora with an accompanying interactive database, intending to provide extensive details on where our plants grow, what they look like, how to identify them, and what names should be applied to them (see National Wetland Plant List; read the note on certification warning above). Although BONAP will continue to modify and standardize our North American vascular plant nomenclature and taxonomy on a regular schedule, our published version of names and classifications will be released later this year.
It should be noted that through our intense and critical assessment of North American plant distributions, we have removed tens of thousands of errant geographic literature reports (at both state and county levels) that have plagued our phytogeographic understandings for decades. We have also updated and expanded all of our biological attributes data that were originally posted on the USDA PLANTS website.Therefore, only here, via these BONAP websites, can all of our current geographic information and accompanying biological attributes data be accessed. Like all floras, ours will continue to evolve and expand over time and will incorporate new technologies and new knowledge as we gain new insights.
As we continue to collaborate with the many botanical specialists throughout the pure and applied scientific communities, we greatly welcome all participants who can provide refinements to our county-level data, or add to our photographic collection, or provide other additions or corrections for the website. Also, if you would like to become a reviewer for the forthcoming Floristic Synthesis, please let us know.
NEWS : BONAPplan to release the Floristic Synthesis of the North America in 2010. See Summary for description.
For an additional sample of BONAP's image gallery, see BONAP Image Gallery by Jessie M. Harris.(Some 13,000 of our 300,000 plant image collection.) Keep watching for major additions on this site.
For additional MAPS: See 1200 BONAP plant distribution maps atPollen.com
The Biota of North America Program (BONAP) was founded in 1969 by Dr. John Kartesz. The program's goal is to develop a unified digital system for assessing the North American biota. BONAP's database now includes assessment for all vascular plants and vertebrate animals (native, naturalized, and adventive) of North America, north of Mexico, and maintains the most current taxonomy, nomenclature, and biogeographic data for all members of the biota.
Please let us know how we can improve our website.
