Welcome to BIEN, the Botanical Information and Ecology Network

BIEN is a network of ecologists, botanists, conservation scientists and other researchers interested in global patterns of plant diversity, function and distribution.

Our central goal is to understand the determinants of the past and present plant distributions and abundance. This knowledge is essential for predicting how species, vegetation and agricultural crops will respond to future climate changes.

The BIEN website provides access to data needed to address these questions: georeferenced plant observations from herbarium specimens, vegetation inventories, and other sources, species distributions maps, plant traits, and climatic and environmental layers.