Recently vegetation comparative analyses have been increasingly used to define vegetation types in Brazilian territory. To carry out these analyses, each study has elaborated its own database, which usually is discarded at the end of a research project. This practice means waste of time, money, personal effort and mainly information. Organising and centralising information in a database, which lasts for a long time is the best way to avoid effort overlapping and waste of money, besides providing opportunities for scientists in different areas to use and share information. FITOGEO was conceived to meet these requirements. It was developed to store and manage floristic, phytosociologic, associated environmental variables and taxonomic information. FITOGEO maintains data integrity. It is “species centred” and able to integrate data and metadata from several sources. This database system presents two interfaces: (1) the floristic/phytosociologic, presenting information from species lists including the species and the methods, and associated environmental variables, such geographic co-ordinate, altitude, temperature and precipitation; and (2) the taxonomic, presenting information related to the species, such as correct spelling, valid name and supraspecific hierarchic levels.
Database; FITOGEO; Metadata; Data Integration; Phytogeography