R&D CENTER

Integrated Korean Flora Database: A versatile web-based database for dissecting flora investigations

Jihun Yeon, Yongsung Kim, Juhyun Kim, Jongsun Park
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Flora investigations in Korea have been conducted by many researchers for a long time. Even though amount of accumulated data is large enough, there is no accurate statistics because of limited utilization of these data. We developed the Integrated Korean Flora Database (http://www.floradb.net/) to understand distribution pattern and habitats of plants in Korea. We collected 323 published paper, 355 thesis, 77 reports and books, and 8 unpublished papers written in between 1962 and 2017 and parsed species lists of 191 papers into the database. From 99,440 records, 2,907 species belonging to 200 families and 939 genera were identified via comparing with two major species lists of Korean plants. 43 endangered species, 142 endemic species, and 347 rare species were identified. The most frequently surveyed species were Commelina communis in herbaceous and Rosa multiflora in woody plants. Microclimate data, such as lowest and highest temperature in one year, collected by automated weather stations managed by Korea Meteorological Administration were integrated and analyzed to evaluate whether distribution of species is reasonable or not. After accumulating species list more, the Integrated Korean Flora Database will provide better quality of species distribution data with evaluation based on microclimate data.