Carta naturalistica della Lombardia: a territorial information system for collecting, management and visualizing data.

As knowledge of an area's resources is essential for its best protection, conservation and use, in 2003 Regione Lombardia decided to promote the collecting of naturalistic data creating an interactive software called Carta Naturalistica della Lombardia (Naturalistic Map of Lombardy Region). The project aims at building and maintaining a comprehensive and up-to-date on-line dataset, to allow everybody knowing about natural richness in one of the most industrialized and inhabited region in Italy. The system envisages the handling of three types of information: field data, herbarium and literature (with or without the reference specimen). Fauna, Vascular Plants, Fungi, Lichens, Habitats and Abiotic Emergencies are the considered topics. Each one has a reference catalogue and, for the first four topics, specific taxonomic checklists have been designed in order to enter scientifically correct data. The authors collaborated with software technicians in order to improve the database structure. The process requires different steps: data are collected, checked and loaded in an appropriate software based on MS Access architecture. The information are consequently transferred to a specific WEB program which provides tools for queries and sets of maps to visualize distribution of the collected data. Most of the information are localized using grid squares of 10’ long. X 6’ lat. corresponding approximately to 12 x 11 km, according to CEU Mapping Flora (Ehrendorfer & Hamann, 1965). It is possible to have more detailed territorial information about the localisation of species, even to relate it to anthropic threats like roads, railways, etc. The management system has been recently completed and 105.418 data have been loaded till now: 4.237 Fauna, 76.236 Flora, 2.573 Fungi, 1.681 Lichens, 19.113 Habitats and 1.578 Abiotic Emergencies. For lichens and flora, herbarium data are available and they represent respectively 48% and 2% of the total. This interfacing program should allow more extensive access of previously somewhat inaccessible information. As regards the field work, we get many data thanks to the very important contribution of expert volunteer researchers, previously organized with specific instructions that allow them to collect in a standardized way. Instead of, the handling of the historical (exsiccate and bibliographical) data proved to be difficult because these information often may be irregular or incomplete.