Some botanical researches of the Faculty of Biology of Taras Shevchenko national university of Kyiv (1930s-2000s)

Study Extent

We have developed a file of the herbarium of the Department of Botany of the Faculty of Biology of Taras Shevchenko national university of Kyiv, which existed before the closure of the department in 2016. Herbarium materials with a total volume of almost 60,000 herbarium sheets were collected and arranged by a large number of both students and employees of the department. Unfortunately, most of the labels of the herbarium are designed in such a way that it is impossible to establish the location where the collection took place. Only 11% of the card index records allowed to identify pre-localities, most of which were the outskirts of well-known settlements and place names from the territory of nature reserves, which is traditionally a place of botanical research in Ukraine. Many such toponyms are not official and are common only among teachers and students of the university. Therefore, on the one hand, such toponyms indicate very clear localities, and on the other hand establishing their exact meaning is a difficult task. Among the localities we have identified, there are places of student internships in the 1950s, which are already flooded by the waters of the Kaniv Reservoir. These are for example the tracts "Tyrliv Island" and "Cossack Spire". Analysis of the file of the herbarium also revealed a large number of options for writing the same localities. In addition, when designing herbarium labels (apparently after returning from practice), a large number of errors were made in toponyms and names of settlements, which did not allow us to reliably identify the locations of a significant number of meetings. As a result, we have identified only 11% of records that can be submitted as a reliable dataset.

Sampling

For localities identified only with accuracy to the settlement, we have chosen an accuracy (radius) of 5 km (5000 m) or less, which eliminates the error in choosing the coordinates of the centroid of the described conditional locality. The indicator "5000 m" was chosen taking into account the density of settlement in the plains of Ukraine.

Quality Control

The authors are responsible for the quality of data provided within the dataset.

Method steps

1. Processing of the original dataset eliminating the records, for which defining coordinates to even som approximation was impossible.
2. Georeferencing.
3. Organizing of a new dataset.

Dataset concists of representatives of Plantae kingdom exclusively.

1. Plantae
   rank: kingdom
2. Tracheophyta
   rank: phylum
3. Magnoliopsida
   rank: class
4. Pinopsida
   rank: class
5. Liliopsida
   rank: class
6. Polypodiopsida
   rank: class
7. Lycopodiopsida
   rank: class

The dataset consists of findings from the territory of Ukraine.