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Geographical Information Systems at
the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 

About us

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew has been running GIS projects for over a decade  (the first started in 1988). Building on the success of several projects (The Madagascar GIS project was one of the most notable) the GIS unit was established in 1998 to facilitate the targeted use of GIS, with the specific remit to:

"To provide an interface for RBG Kew's plant diversity research, presenting data and producing tools to underpin surveys and inventories, conservation, and environmental monitoring"

GIS can be used as an automated mapping program, although  its real power lies in its use as an analytical tool, integrating both spatial and systematic data. For RBG, Kew, GIS allows us to unlock the spatial data that has been collected and stored in databases, from specimens, literature and living collections, etc. GIS allows us to perform a more active role in conservation biology and allows the study of relationships between individual plants and the physical factors controlling growth and distribution.

What is GIS?

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