New interactive map shows the most common flora in every part of Wales

A new interactive map allows users to see the most common flora in every part of Wales.

The map created by Pl@ntNet Identify is based on data scanned by the app’s users across the world, as well as climatic variables, soil types and data from the Global Biodiversity Information Service.

Released in Beta, the map allows users to select as large or small a part of Wales as they like and see what plants have been identified by users there.

For each species, the system also returns the number of known occurrences of the species in the selected area.

The Pl@ntNet app was started more than ten years ago by a French research consortium in order to use AI to identify plants.

The crowdsourced plant identification tools uses citizen scientists as a means of monitoring protected areas.

With several hundreds of thousands of daily users, it has created a census of more than 43,000 plant species globally.

Users of the interactive map can enter an address or use the mouse to select a particular area, then hit the ‘search’ button to see the results for that square mile.

Pierre Bonnet who is responsible for the project told the Conversation website that nearly half of the plants on Earth are yet to be photographed in the wild.

Writing alongside computer science researcher Alexis Joly, he said: “Scaling up this type of approach will require a much larger number of field observations and observers.

“This is why, more than ever, citizen networks for monitoring biodiversity must continue their development by promoting the sharing of free data, while meeting the expectations of better knowledge of our immediate environment.”