The KSC Herbarium Database Access Website

Now Available

Konza Prairie Biological Station collections

Type specimens

Using the database

Query the Database now!!  Please go and check it out and provide us with feedback

Clicking the query link now brings you to an introductory page that lets you know that "KSC_testdata" is the database that is available.  This is the database that contains all the specimen data for the specimen collected on Konza Prairie Research Natural Area, an LTER site located near KSU campus.  As such all collections databased are from the locality described on this page.

Because we are managing the data with SPECIFY 4.6 and using it as the web server, you are seeing the "live" version of the database when you query. 

When you click "query" you will be brought to a page that lists the available queries. As we gain experience in building useful web-based queries, they will be added to this page. Suggestions would be appreciated.

The query pages

• OPERATORS: Please note the position of the operator tab. The selection here defaults to LIKE which is often not useful.  Contains is most useful but may take longer.  Operators for numbers and dates are different.

Field explanations

The query page lists several searchable fields of data and some that are there for display purposes only.  You can deselect any of the fields to take them out of the results display.  If you choose the sorted version, you must choose to display Full Taxon Name, by which it sorts.  Otherwise, you are free to turn off any of the fields in the display.  Unfortunately, you don't have the ability to reorder the fields in the display

• Barcode is a 7-digit number applied to each databased specimen

• Common Name is downloaded from PLANTS. Not all taxa are provided with a common name so searching is not useful here.

• Full Taxon Name is the primary field of interest for most of you. This field contains all determinations applied to specimens in the database.  Thus, you may get back more than one record for each specimen if there's more than one determination.  Look at the barcode to determine if two annotations are from the same or different specimens.

• Determinations is a display-only field that provides a string of all determinations for a record.  It also shows you whether the determination is considered to be current= "yes" or not current= "no".  "Current" = yes means this is where the specimen is currently filed in the herbarium, rather than the most "up-to-date" determination.  

• Collectors is a display-only field that provides a string of all collectors of a specimen as indicated on the label (last name, first name)

• Collection Date is a searchable field, returns MM/DD/YYYY

• Locality (string) is a display-only field that provides a string of County: Placename (in this case "Konza"); Specific location; Legal description (where provided on the labels).  

• Konza WS is a searchable field that contains the "name" of the watershed or burn unit by treatment.  These names have varied some over the years so should be used with caution.  Also, although the names are locations (polygon), they also contain information about the "treatment regime" with respect to grazing and burning which is maintained for that unit.  A full explanation of the watershed designations can be found on this figure.

• KONZ GRD stands for Konza Grid and is a reference to the grid square system that has been used to locate things on Konza. It is an arbitrary set of squares placed over the Konza Map that is much like the grid systems used for located places on a highway map.  The areas within the grid squares are considerably smaller than that within a burn unit in general so they are more useful for locating a plant, assuming the person doing the collecting knew where they were when the collection took place (not always a good assumption).   

• Since most specimens lack standardized locality information other than legal description (i.e. lat. and long. or UTM grid), these are left off  for now.

Query limitations: 

• You can't search for a "taxon", only determinations.  So, if a name has NOT been applied to a specimen, it cannot be found. If you search for "Chamaesyce", you get no hits because the specimens in the database do not have that name applied to them (only "Euphorbia"). This is in spite of the fact that the taxonomy tree "recognizes" Chamaesyce as the name for several species of Euphorbia in the database (e.g., Chamaesyce stictospora).  Thus, if you wish to find all specimens of a species, you should look for the name indicated as current (="yes" in parentheses after the name) for the name you searched on and perform an additional search with that name.  

• Currently, we can't figure out a way to search higher taxa because in Specify names listed as synonyms are not associated with higher taxa ("parents") in the tree.  So, if you did search a higher taxon, you would only return those specimens with determinations to names that are not considered to be synonyms of something else.