Pierre Bonnet, Michel Arbonnier & Pierre Grard.
CIRAD (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement), Montpellier, France
This project aims at developing an identification system for 350 species of trees in West African dry area. This tool will be available on CD-ROMs, and will be transferred on the Web-site of CIRAD. The identification is made thanks to a graphic interface modified by the user that allows identification by non-specialists. It gives access for each species to a large amount of information on the ecology and distinguishing characters, in addition to numerous photos.
Trees, shrubs and lianas play a major role in the daily life of West Africans. The ecological requirements of species and the traditions associated with their use are thus essential to understand the landscapes modelled by man, and to recommend new sustainable management strategies. But, the mere identification of these species is difficult due to environmental pressures. The local knowledge concerning their many uses is being lost.
The present project is an initiative in the emerging area of biodiversity informatics. The knowledge base, built according to a tree species identification system named IDAO (Grard, P., 2002) is useful in understanding and assessing the biodiversity of theses areas, as it will provide and facilitate dissemination of scientific and traditional knowledge. The adaptation of this system to western Africa is based on numerous years of field trips conducted by Michel Arbonnier, who synthesized them in the flora of “Trees, shrubs and lianas of West African dry zones.” (1996, 2002).
This extensive knowledge base on the tree species in this region will enhance environment-monitoring capabilities and therefore improve the designs for sustainable management strategies in the region. The need to assess and monitor the biodiversity in such areas has only increased over a period of time and has so far been little aided by modern technologies.
So there is a large demand for computer tools that help identify species and provide taxon information. This tool will assess knowledge in botany, ecology and the uses of 350 ligneous species. Based on a flora which in already widely available, this work will be illustrated by numerous photos (nearly 1900 in all). The species identification system will be drawn from existing reference herbaria. The multi-access identification system, based on both vegetative and sexual characters can be used throughout the year by non-specialists. This tool will thus serve the scientific and non-scientific community in addition to providing autonomous training to young taxonomists working in this field.
This work is developed by the CIRAD and AMAP laboratory: AMAP: Botanique et Bioinformatique de l’Architecture des Plantes [Mixed discipline research centre working in growth models of plants through architectural studies and taxonomic identification tools].