Weather data
A large number of automatic weather stations has been implemented in the frame of the BIOTA AFRICA project by the Namibian National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) and the Group "Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology" (BEE) of the University of Hamburg. The website offers hourly updates of data and graphs of a large number of weather parameters.


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BIOTACollections
 Database software for storage, administration and analysis of plant collection data

The database software BIOTACollections has been developed to cope with the storage of plant collection and observation data with only core information about the samples, like species name, locality, latitude and longitude, the collector and collection date, herbarium identification or data source and some free text fields to note unstructured observations or annotations. Because of the interface to geographical information systems the user can view the location of each record on the map. Tools for filtering the data support the user in extracting the essentials of the data for the purposes of his/her interest.

We recommend the use of BIOTACollections in all cases in which the data of a collection has its focus on the core fields and/or the amount of data records needs a rapid workflow from field book entries to electronic records and/or to merge several data sources for the sole purpose of producing distribution maps.

For enhanced purposes, the data can be transferred to BIOTABase and vice versa. Merging procedures, import and export tools and several very useful functions to process the data are part of the software.

BIOTACollections has been developed by the BioMonitoring Data Facility of BIOTA AFRICA. Many participants of the BIOTA AFRICA initiative contributed to the development of BIOTACollections, especially the working group Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology of Plants at the Biocentre Klein Flottbek and Botanical Garden, University of Hamburg. Andrzej Suwald and Dr Gerhard Muche conducted the programming. The development of BIOTACollections was funded by BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research).

BIOTACollections is freeware. If you use it for scientific purposes, please cite as follows: Muche, G.; Jürgens, N.: BIOTACollections - Software for managing botanical data, Version as noted in the information of the software menu item "Help / About".



First installation


Setup for first installation
The installation is only necessary for the first time you want to use BIOTACollections. If you only want updates of the components BIOTACollections.EXE, you can download that single component and overwrite existing files on your computer (see below).
The installation package contains a setup routine with the component:
BIOTACollections.
BIOTACollections is freeware and runs on Windows (Windows2000 or higher).
Please download the file and save it in a folder of your choice. Then start the executable file "BIOTACollectionsSetup.exe" and follow the instructions.

Download


Attention! Special Update.

For an update of BIOTACollections from version 20101102 to the next version 20110106 it is necessary to uninstall BIOTACollections and to run the new setup application.
In the case of problems or if you have any questions please send a message to:  biotabase_support@biota-africa.org


Attention! Updates as of 2021

For updates of BIOTACollections from version 20121031 to the next versions please visit www.bioobservation.org.


Update to latest version


Latest version of BIOTACollections
(Version 20121031)

BIOTACollections is the main application. The download package contains the latest version of the executable file ‘BIOTACollections.exe'. You will need this package if the component installed on your computer is of an older version than the version declared above.

Download