The making of Plant Atlas 2020, from field to folio

Building on pioneering efforts from the 1962 Atlas of the British Flora through to the 2002 New Atlas, Plant Atlas 2020 maps nearly 3,500 vascular plant and charophyte taxa across 3,893 10 km squares, drawing on some 30 million records collected by over 8,500 volunteers between 2000 and 2019. Enhanced web based displays reveal geographical, altitudinal and phenological trends at various scales, while sophisticated statistical methods, aimed at reducing recording biases, have produced over 22,000 estimates of 10 km distributional change. The results highlight long term declines in native and archaeophyte species and rises in recent introductions, reflecting land use transformation and guiding future conservation efforts.