BIOLOGICAL INVENTORIES AND COMPUTER-DATA BASES - THEIR ROLE IN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS

An important goal of biological inventories is to provide information for environmental assessments of development projects and biodiversity conservation. Likewise, computer data bases have been proposed for ef ficient compilation and management of biological information. However, the attributes of biological inventories and computer data bases have not been examined with respect to environmental assessments. This art icle presents a case study in Mexico to analyze the current limitation s of biological inventories for successful environmental assessments a nd biodiversity conservation in developing countries. Results demonstr ate that, considering the objectives of environmental assessments and information constraints, computerized biological inventories should be assembled with a minimum of record fields: taxonomic data and georefe renced collection localities. Furthermore, it is proposed that environ mental assessments should become a feedback to biological inventories and an important financial support to universities and research instit utions in developing countries.