How the project started:
In February 2008 Ruth attended the Evolutionary Islands conference at Naturalis, Leiden (the Netherlands). After meeting Piero, who was in Leiden visiting the herbarium, they stayed in touch and discussed some possible project ideas for research work in French Guiana, where Piero was about to take up his new post at Herbier de Guyane.
Piero was concerned that the savannas seemed to be overlooked by many of the botanists visiting French Guiana, while at the same time this area is among the most severely threatened by development activities, such as road building, housing and agriculture.
After much correspondence, and with Gina joining the project as the photographer, the team started looking around for funding possibilities so that Gina and Ruth could go to French Guiana for a substantial period of time and explore and document the flora of the savannas.
What we aim to do:
We aimed to document the flora of the savannas of French Guiana by carrying out a floristic inventory. When our work is complete, the results of the inventory will be published as a synonymized checklist.
Other planned outputs include:
- This Scratchpad site: Providing a web-presence for our project within the Scratchpad user-community, background information, and species profiles for some of the angiosperms most charactersitic of the savannas.
- A sister website, being built by Gina: This site will be used to showcase photography of the stunning landscapes and flora of the savannas.
- Attendance of conferences: Piero has already given a presentation on our work at the Flora of the Guianas meeting, that was held at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., in November 2010. We hope to raise awareness of our work at other conferences and meetings in the future.
Future plans:
- Creation of interactive keys to some of the species-rich groups characteristic of the savannas, hosted by our Scratchpad. These will provide a resource for some of the many environmental consultants, conservation groups and biologists who visit the savannas to carry out habitat surveys and environmental impact assessments in advance of development. See Neotropikey (a key to the families of neotropical vascular plants) for an example of an online interactive key built in Lucid http://www.kew.org/science/tropamerica/neotropikey.htm (you will need Java installed on your computer to run this key- http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp).
- Work towards an illustrated field manual or Flora of the savannas that will complement the existing Guide to the Vascular Plants of Central French Guiana, based on the area around Saul.