Plantlife IPA Metadata

Metadata - Plantlife Important Plant Areas (IPA) Database

http://www.plantlifeipa.org/home

Beth Newman – Plantlife’s Biological Data and GIS Manager

IPA database overview

This database holds information on sites identified through the Important Plant Areas Programme. Currently the database holds information on IPAs in Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Israel, Lebanon, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

The database has been developed to bring all available plant and habitat data together in one place, with the aim of making a selection of key sites, assessing their threats and protection levels, and ultimately to disseminate these data in accessible and consistent formats to a range of audiences who have an influence on the protection and conservation of the IPA.

The IPA datasets are made freely available for non-commercial use to help inform conservation planning and other decision-making processes (full terms and conditions http://www.plantlifeipa.org/termsofuse).

IPA Overview

Across the globe plant species and the important habitats that sustain them are disappearing at an accelerating pace. The IPA Programme is a means of identifying the best sites for wild plants (higher and lower), fungi and their habitats using 3 consistent criteria, threatened species, botanical richness and threatened habitats. http://www.plantlifeipa.org/criteria

For more information on the IPA programme to date and how to identify an IPA Network in your country:
http://www.plantlifeipa.org/about

Identifying_and_Conserving_IPAs_around_the_world_-_A_guide_for_botanists.pdf (plantlife.org.uk)


Table 1 - IPA information included within the database:

Update frequency: New or updated data is added to the database when shared via contributing IPA Partner Organisation.

Language: The primary language is English, with the option to submit information in Project partner’s native language if desirable. There is the additional ability to upload data in non-English scripts such as Cyrillic and Arabic languages.

Database Structure: Database structure supported using SQL Server technology to facilitate reporting capabilities.

Data Submission Process: Data for each site is entered online by national coordinators with secure logins, via a series of online forms (table 1). IPA spatial boundary information can be uploaded as kml format and assigned to each IPA. The database also has provision for confidential treatment of particularly sensitive species.

Parties wanting to submit data should contact: enquiries@plantlife.org.uk

Accessing data: Parties can access site information for each IPA by using the search function tab above. For GIS boundaries please see the GIS tab above. 

Plantlife will assess what data has been submitted for the countries requested. If data/ boundaries are available Plantlife will set up a data access agreement with the requesting party and then send through the information in an Excel or Shapefile format.