The antarctic plant database: A specimen and literature based information system

Abstract

The British Antarctic Survey's Antarctic Plant Database holds over 50,000 herbarium records for Antarctic and sub-Antarctic flowering plants and cryptogams held in herbaria worldwide. In addition, it holds information on species occurrences recorded in the literature for southern polar regions and synonymy indexes for relevant species. The database has been linked to a geographic information system, which can aid record validation and resource management as well as the study of species distributions and biodiversity.