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What is Flora Raetica

Flo­ra Raet­i­ca con­nects the past with the present — and cre­ates the basis for pre­serv­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty for future gen­er­a­tions. This clear­ly shows how the plant world has changed over the last 100 years.

Project man­age­ment:
Chris­t­ian Rix­en
Thomas Wohlge­muth

Coor­di­na­tion:
Ingrid Jansen

Spon­sor­ship:
Graubün­den Botany Cir­cle

Ini­tia­tive and pro­fes­sion­al sup­port:
Ange­li­ka Abder­halden
Markus Bich­sel
Mary­lau­re de La Harpe Susan­na Geiss­büh­ler
Andreas Gygax
Chris­tine Huovi­nen
Ingrid Jansen
Chris­t­ian Rix­en
Daniel Scher­rer
Veroni­ka Stöck­li
Son­ja Wipf
Thomas Wohlge­muth

Recapturing the flora of Graubünden

Graubün­den has a par­tic­u­lar­ly diverse flo­ra. How­ev­er, many regions are still lit­tle stud­ied.

With the Flo­ra Raet­i­ca project — Flo­Rae for short — we are clos­ing these gaps:

  • We com­pre­hen­sive­ly doc­u­ment which plants are cur­rent­ly grow­ing in the can­ton.
  • We com­pare the data with the his­tor­i­cal data from the “Flo­ra von Graubün­den”
    (Josias Braun-Blan­quet & Eduard Rübel, 1932–1935).

Research questions

We exam­ine the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

  • How has the plant world changed over the last hun­dred years?
  • In which habi­tats has bio­di­ver­si­ty increased and decreased?
  • What role do cli­mate change and the chang­ing use of the land­scape play in this?
  • Which plant species are new, which have dis­ap­peared?
  • Which species migrate to high­er alti­tudes and why?
  • Which species groups (e.g. arable weeds) are rar­er or more com­mon today?

Time horizon

  • Map­ping 2022–2028
  • Pro­cess­ing of his­tor­i­cal finds 2024–2028
  • Doc­u­men­ta­tion of species and eval­u­a­tions until 2031
  • Book pub­li­ca­tion for the 100th anniver­sary in 2032

Organization

Flo­ra Raet­i­ca is a cit­i­zen sci­ence project. Around 125 plant enthu­si­asts research the flo­ra of Graubün­den on a vol­un­tary basis.

Financing

This long-term project is only pos­si­ble thanks to the sup­port of numer­ous insti­tu­tions and foun­da­tions. Every spon­sor­ship helps us to make the plant diver­si­ty of Graubün­den vis­i­ble and to pre­serve it in the long term.

We would like to thank our spon­sors and part­ners for their valu­able sup­port.