CALIFORNIA CENTRAL COAST BIODIVERSITY DATABASE

The Central Coast of California is a region rich both in biological diversity and jurisdictional complexity. The STEPS Institute is helping to coordinate a network or researchers, managers, and policy makers to evaluate rapidly changing biological diversity along the steep environmental gradients that characterize this part of California. Those gradients include the land-sea interface and the coastal-inland gradient of ecosystems. Much of the current work on this effort is devoted to development this database, the function of which is to catalogue, and facilitate access to, research results already in place from decades of past work by researchers and managers working for different organizations in the California Central Coast.

• What is included in the database? The database includes descriptions of, and contact information for accessing, a wide variety of existing datasets on the biota and physical characteristics of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine habitats in California's Central Coast region. For example; plant, animal, microbe and weather data for specific locales; studies of species populations and biological communities; aerial photos and land-use data; and organismal collections in museums, herbaria, and arboreta; are all included.

• How do I use the database? The database can be searched for any characeristic potentially associated with available datasets, including specific locations, species, habitats, personell involved in collecting the original data, or the contact person who currently administers a dataset. Each record in the database supplies a description of the dataset, as well as contact information for obtaining or accessing the dataset itself.

• Can I add to the database? If you administer a database relevant to the biodiversity of California's Central Coast, and would like it to be available to other researchers and interested parties, please contact us.