The VegItaly project for a national vegetation database: first applications, criticality and perspectives.

Relevé databanks play a special role in monitoring and analyzing vegetation and to objectivize phytosociologiacal investigation. With the purpose to create an Italian database for archiving and sharing data, the project AnArchive for botanical data was developed in the last decade (http://www.anarchive.it). AnArchive is a collaborative project that involves several Italian universities coordinated by the University of Perugia. Among the subprojects carried out VegItaly (http://vegitaly.anarchive.it), represents a new web database designed to store, retrieve and analyze vegetation data (phytosociological and field plot) according to the definition of “vegetation database” suggested by the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD) and the IAVS Eco-informatics working group. Comparing to similar projects particular attention has been taken to handle classification information assigned to each relevés taken from original papers or reassigned after further revision (e.g. type relevé, phytosociological rank etc.), in order to make available all metadata. Currently about 7000 relevés of different vegetation types are stored in the system just enough to implement specific output format for statistical analysis packages or perform classification methods such as the Cocktail method on a large data set extracted from the system. To perform the Cocktail method, the database system was interfaced with the program Juice 7.0 creating a compatible exporting data system. The use of different classifications methods allowed to obtain important results, not only about classification models, but also providing ideas for improving the functionality of the archive system. Formal definitions will be integrated in the project VegItaly in order to create a simple classification method available to users. Moreover several tools and functions will be created to facilitate the statistical and spatial analysis. During the work some criticalities have emerged such as superficial collecting and archiving data methods, weakness in taxonomical and syntaxonomical interpretation of the data published by different authors, the requirement of standardized floristic data in accordance with the taxonomic system continuously in developing, lack of funding and still a scarce interest of researchers to acquire a rigorous archiving system. VegItaly is supported by Italian Society of Vegetation Science (former Società Italiana di Fitosociologia http://www.scienzadellavegetazione.it/).