VegItaly: Technical features, crucial issues and some solutions

VegItaly is at present the largest Italian vegetation database. It is the result of a collaborative project aspiring to represent a major reference for the Italian vegetation scientists. The paper emphasizes its benefits for phytosociological data management and describes the solutions adopted to solve several technical problems, like the treatment of different vegetation stratification systems, the conversion of vegetation cover values, taxonomic and syntaxonomic issues, data import and access. The structure of the taxonomic list produced to support the storing of data is described. It allows an easy management of synonymic relationships and is constantly updated according to new publicati…