AMS-VegBank: a new database of vegetation plots for the Italian territory

Abstract

The importance of collection, storage and exchange of georeferenced vegetation plot-based data has significantly grown in the recent decades, because of the new potentialities offered by ecoinformatics. In this article we introduce the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna vegetation database (AMS-VegBank; GIVD code EU-IT-021) compiling 17,505 georeferenced vegetation-plot observations within a time span of 90 years. This database includes 337,799 occurrence data of vascular plant species, belonging to many different habitat types. The historical relevance of the presented database is highlighted by the presence of some of the most ancient vegetation-plot observations in Europe (years 1930–1938). The geographic coverage of the database is mostly for Italian territory but it includes also data from other countries. The thematic focuses represented in the database are various, such as small Mediterranean islands, the Dolomite Mountains and the Italian National Parks. The large amount of historical plots available for the country not previously included in existing databases, combined with the constant action to improve the georeferencing of existing data and the addition of new data, highlight the uniqueness of this database. AMS-VegBank represents thus an important tool for studying plant biodiversity within the context of continental and global vegetation plot databases.