TDWG GEOGRAPHY SUB-COMMITTEE
Co-convenors of the committee
Neil Brummitt (Herbarium,
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Rafaël Govaerts (Herbarium,
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Both of us have been involved with compiling large-scale databases of accepted taxa and their distribution, which apply the TDWG standard for recording distributions. I have been working at genus-level for all vascular plants, while Rafael has been working at species-level for both complete families (e.g. Araceae, Araliaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Rubiaceae, Sapotaceae) and also all seed plants alphabetically by genus (now ploughing through the letter 'E').
Committee members
M.T. Almeida (University of
Coimbra)
S. Davis (Centre for
Economic Botany, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
P. Dávila (UNAM, Mexico)
E. Forero (University of
Bogota)
N. Gasper (Santarem)
H. Gillett (World
Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge)
P.M. Kirk (CABI Bioscience,
Egham)
J.-N. Labat (Muséum National
d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris)
J.S. Peterson (USDA, Baton
Rouge)
Y. Roskov (Komarov Botanical
Institute, St. Petersburg)
E. Vitek (Naturhistorisches
Museum, Vienna).
Availability on Electronic Media
Information
on the standard in electronic form is accessible from the TDWG web site at: http://www.tdwg.org/geo2.htm.
The standard as a pdf file, the codes and their designations from Levels 1 to 4
(in both, as MS-Access and text-delimited files), and the map files, will be
available from there.
Digitised
georeferenced maps suitable for use in a GIS are available from the web site of
the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/gis/tdwg).
Thought for the future:
Should the TDWG Geography standard also cover the oceans? What happens to large lakes or inland seas? Any input from marine or freshwater biologists would be very welcome!