Vascular Plant Axiophyte Scores for Great Britain, Based on BSBI County Lists

Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) vice-county recorders assessed which plant species indicate high-quality habitat, creating county-level lists. This dataset aggregates those lists from May 2016 to produce national 'axiophyte-ness' scores for vascular plants in Great Britain. The work was supported by the UK-SCAPE programme under Natural Environment Research Council award NE/R016429/1.

Use Cases

• Prioritizing conservation sites based on plant species indicative of high-quality habitat.
• Modeling biodiversity or ecosystem health using axiophyte scores as a proxy.
• Comparing regional habitat quality assessments across 24 British counties.
• Updating species distribution models with an indicator of habitat value.

Strengths

• Derived from expert assessments by BSBI vice-county recorders.
• Aggregates data from 24 county-level lists into a national summary.
• Explicitly linked to a specific version date (May 2016) and a DOI for traceability.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is based on county lists available in May 2016 and may not reflect current distributions.
• Coverage is limited to 24 counties; national scores may be incomplete for some regions.

Provenance

Source

Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) vice-county recorders, aggregated by the Environmental Information Data Centre.

Collection Method

Summarized from published BSBI county lists of axiophytes.

Time Range

Based on lists available as of May 2016.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-19 07:34:42.393589; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Great Britain, with data from 24 counties.