Ohio Moss Atlas Is Updated

Initiated in 1996 (Andreas and Snider 1996) and updated and revised in 2011 (Andreas 2011), The Ohio Moss Atlas has now had a second revision and is online on our web site. Like the 2011 revision, the core of the new version is a database produced by Barb Andreas and Diane Lucas that is a compilation of moss taxa and their verified herbarium specimen records and literature records. As before, the maps are county-level resolution with two symbols: dots for verified specimens and squares for literature only. Nomenclature has been updated, using names set forth on a list of Ohio mosses developed by Bill Buck and Barb Andreas published this year on the Consortium of North American Bryophytes web site.

An innovative mapping method was employed to make this new atlas. Dismayed that there did not seem to be any utility or “app” to convert spreadsheet data into dot maps, we contacted the Geospatial Information Librarian at The Ohio State University, Joshua Sadvari, who gave us initial guidance and connected us with Adam Porr and Ruiyu Tan, Consulting Manager and undergraduate student, respectively, at the OSU Center for Urban and Regional Analysis. They produced an elegant system to batch produce (yay! captioned (hooray!) .jpeg distribution maps that employs a combination of ArcGIS mapping and spatial analysis software and the programming language Python. This was accompanied by a clear, concise, and complete user’s guide. We are extremely appreciative of their efforts. Now that it is a breeze to make distribution maps, updates can be made more frequently. Bill Schumacher is now maintaining the OMLA moss database and is participating in a new endeavor, with Brandon Ashcroft and Barb Andreas, to produce a complementary liverwort atlas.

I uploaded the maps to the media storage portion of OMLA web site and made a downloadable PDF. Using Diane’s spreadsheet with html (web) code for the maps of all 397 moss species and varieties and data on occurrences in each of Ohio’s 88 counties, Julia Wiesenberg updated all 88 separate county pages on our site.

Snider, Jerry A. and Barbara K. Andreas 1996. A Catalog and Atlas of the Mosses of Ohio. Ohio Biol. Surv. Misc. Cont. No. 2 iv + 105p. Andreas, Barbara K. 2011. Ohio Bryology and the History of the Moss Atlas. OBELISK (8): 9- 13.

-Bob Klips