2003-2005
Institut d'Estudis Andorrans i Departament de Medi Ambient del Govern d'Andorra
Ninot Sugrañes, Josep M. (IP). Carreras Raurell, Jordi. Carrillo Ortuño, Amparo. Ferré Codina, Albert. Mercadé López, Arnau.


Setting a catalogue and a red list of the vascular flora of Andorra (Pyrenees)

The main objective of this project was to draw a red list of flora, useful for land management purposes. Since there was no an updated flora for the territory, we started compiling a critical catalogue, or check-list. To this end, we used previous floras and a lot of data scattered among various papers, and we did some field work aimed to the less known habitats. Then, we obtained a floristic catalogue including 1,537 taxa (mainly species, and some infraspecific units). The herbarium samples yielded are kept in the Herbarium of the University of Barcelona. Among the taxa previously cited from Andorra, we discarded almost 200 names, corresponding to doubtful findings not supported by herbarium material, or to nomenclatural confusions. On the other hand, we added an equivalent amount of new species to the flora of Andorra.

To elaborate the red list we followed the criteria set by the IUCN in 2003, which implies that the populations have to be estimated particularly for each territory under study. In the case of small countries, this implies that species moderately scarce in a more general region become very rare (1 or 2 populations) at the local scale, and then they become categorized into the red list. Thus, the red list of Andorra is made by 364 taxa, classified into four categories: critically endangered (56), endangered (89), threatened (153), and with deficient data (48). We also assessed other 80 taxa grouped as "Other interesting plants", which had biogeographic particularities, though not face particular conservation problems.


Research field:
Floristics and Taxonomy


Project results: