FLOTROP, a massive contribution to plant diversity data for open ecosystems in northern tropical Africa.

The FLOTROP dataset contains numerous plant observations (around 340,000 occurrences) in northern tropical Africa (from the 5^th to 25^th parallel north) in open ecosystems (savannah and steppe). They were collected by multiple collectors between 1920 and 2012 and were managed by Philippe Daget. These observations are probably the most important and unique source of plant distribution over the Sahel area. The data are now available in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Tela Botanica website, and as maps in the African Plant Database. For the overall area involved, this dataset has increased by 40% the data available in the GBIF. For some countries between the 15^th and 21^st parallel north, the FLOTROP dataset has increased available occurrences 10-fold compared to the data existing in the GBIF. Design Type(s) data integration objective • biodiversity assessment objective • data collection and processing objective Measurement Type(s) Plants Technology Type(s) digital curation Factor Type(s) species • geographic location • temporal_interval Sample Characteristic(s) Viridiplantae • North Africa Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]