The answer is "Not at present". Although they appear to be fairly standard *.dbf files, the climate grids are stored in rotated format to eliminate the effects of the date. We have to process this here in CIAT.

In the course of this year we will be processing new climate grids. Mike Hutchinson and Oswaldo Tellez are processing a 1 km grid for Mexico at CRES in the ANU at Canberra. Once this available we will transform it for FloraMap and make it available as an external grid to those users who request it. We hope eventually to produce 1 km ( 30 arc seconds ) grids for the whole of Latin America, and in the not too distant future other parts of the tropics then the World. That's a big job.

A consequence of giving access to these high precision grids is that FloraMap will be VERY slow processing them. I aim to remake the storage and retrieval structures of FloraMap to increase the processing speed by some orders of magnitude. Unfortunately the structures will be highly unconventional. Until we have them working fast and fault free, we are not considering an import facility .

FloraMap was designed and tested under Windows 95® and WindowsNT®. Both of these operating systems use the directory C:\temp in their normal operations. FloraMap also uses it for temporary files. FloraMap does not create it because it is assumed to always be there. However some applications of Windows98® and Macintosh systems run without it.

Solution :

You already have the Borland Database Engine ( BDE ) installed on your machine. This is often set to use a small number of file handlers ( usually 16 ). FloraMap needs a lot more than that, but if the installation does not load a copy of BDE for you ( which it will not do if you already have a copy ) it does not get the opportunity to reset this option.

Solution :

Increase the number of file handlers :.

Go into Control Panel

Follow SYSTEM, then INIT.

Open BDE Configuration

Find MAXFILEHANDLE - ( it is a parameter of BDE )

Edit it to read 200. ( We don't know if all of these are needed but FloraMap always works with this setting. We know it needs more than 48. )

If you look on this Web site under 'Examples' you'll find the downloadable PDF of the Theory section from the User's Manual. This should give you an idea of how FloraMap operates. There will shortly be downloadable examples of the use of FloraMap.

FloraMap has two functions for opening maps or coverages (Map Layers). The first is on the toolbar of the main window (Map Window). This option loads a complete map made from various Map Layers. The files for this function are .MAP type.

The second is to load a coverage (Map Layer) from the Layer Control Window. On loading a coverage a drop-down menu opens offering four types of coverage:

1. Accession points
2. Shapefile
3. Accession points shapefile
4. Probability map layer

If you are trying to load samcountries.shp from the directory floramap\coverages\america then you should choose ‘Shapefile’. If you’ve selected ‘Accession points’, FloraMap expects. DBF files. If you try to load this component from a shapefile coverage, FloraMap refuses to do it and a message appears:

The file:

F:\COVERAGES\America\samcountries.DBF is a part of map layer.

Continue?

The answer is NO, it is not correct to go on with this process. But if you try to load the other part, .shp, FloraMap does not check this and searches for the coordinates of the accession points within Shapefile. They won’t be found, because the format is different and a message will appear "Can’t find LATITUDE".

Solution :

It appears that the Asian Climate Grid is just about at the limit of what FloraMap can handle unless it has great lashings of memory to work in. It uses the Borland Database Engine to read the climate grids. Unfortunately it gives no reliable error message but just becomes unstable. It is possible to get it to run on a Pentium II at 233Mhz and 64Mb Ram but you have to take a number of precautions.

Solution:

Not guaranteed infallible but the following may help.

Close down all other applications. I had to shut down all applications apart from the NT Task Manager. Don't be tempted to have a quick look at your emails until FloraMap has finished creating the climate file.

Erase all FloraMap dbf working files from c:\temp before invoking FloraMap.

Turn off option "correct temperature" and set "mismatches" to "moved manual" in the "configuration menu" under "settings".

Run the dataset through the first (checking data) stage in FloraMap by opening the accessions set. This will show you the mismatched accessions. Go back and either delete them or correct them in Excel.

Have the Task Manager window running on performance. If the operation is going well the CPU Usage should hover around 60 to 70%. If it climbs to 100% and stays there for more than about 5 minutes then the BDE probably has the bit between its teeth and is heading for the sunset. You'll have to 'end task', clean everything out and start again.

This state of affairs is far from ideal and we hope to completely redesign the data storage and retrieval for the next release. For those of you who cannot get it to run, even after shutting everything else down and taking your coffee break while it chugs away, I have made a 10 arc minute grid for Asia just like those for Latin America and Africa. You can download it from this page. It is about 2.8Mb. Use it as an external grid, you can switch to the internal seasia grid to display the probability surface if you wish.

This was a fault of FloraMap Release 1.00. It was unresolved at time of release and unfortunately we did not issue a warning. Release 1.01 has solved the problem and also improved the handling of legends when there are many map layers. To get Release 1.01 go to the Downloads page to download the new installation file.