Flora Survey Data from Biological Databases of South Australia 

The Biological Databases of South Australia (BDBSA) is South Australia's flora and fauna database that stores and manages specimen and observation records. This record is the flora component that contains 1,050,631 plant measurements collected from 224,572 sites, across 5565 plant species since 1976. This dataset includes vegetation structural attributes, observations on individual plants such as stem diameter, crown extent and crown density, as well as occurrence data. The resulting database provides a comprehensive record of plant diversity across sites ground-truthed during a diverse range of biodiversity projects undertaken in South Australia and provides a basis for future updating of mapping or other relevant work such as species modelling. Only validated BDBSA data is made publicly available and all records of confidential taxa have been masked from the dataset. Data is accessible from the TERN Data Infrastructure, which provides the ability to extract subsets of vegetation data across multiple data collections and bioregions for more than 31 variables including stem diameter, tree crown extent, and number of individual plants.  

We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. 

BDBSA aims to substantially improve knowledge and management of the biodiversity of South Australia, as well as track the direction of long-term ecological change by: determining the distribution of plant and terrestrial vertebrate species; systematically surveying the range of major habitats via quadrat-based sampling; collecting opportunistic data by active searching away from established quadrats; assessing vegetation and fauna condition; establishing baseline data for future monitoring; producing structural and floristic vegetation maps. 

Collected data includes: vegetation structural attributes, observations on individual plants such as stem diameter, crown extent and crown density, as well as occurrence data.