VASCAN
Introduction
The Database of Vascular Plants of Canada (VASCAN) is a comprehensive list of all vascular plants reported in Canada, Greenland (Denmark) and Saint Pierre and Miquelon (France). VASCAN is a checklist database. Its core record is a taxon, e.g. a species like Acer saccharum Marshall. It also contains information related to that taxon, such as its distribution, taxonomy, synonyms and vernacular names, and a source for almost all of these elements. You can read all about VASCAN here.
As opposed to many other checklist websites, we designed VASCAN to be as open as possible. Instead of locking the data in an unusable format, users can download the whole database or their own subset through the checklist builder as Darwin Core Archives or flat text files. Users can also report and view issues with the data and interface in our open issue tracker.
VASCAN is a Java application running in Tomcat using a MySQL database. Although it was designed for plants, we made an effort to generalize the structure of the database and application, so it could also be used for other taxonomic groups, such as animals and fungi.
Links
- Database of Vascular Plants of Canada (VASCAN)
- Source code for the webportal
- Open issues & suggestions
- Blog posts about VASCAN