The phytosociological database SOPHY as the basis of plant socio-ecology and phytoclimatology in France
Résumé
This article draws attention to the botanical and ecological database SOPHY (GIVD ID EU-FR-003), which is hosted at the University Paul Cézanne at Marseille, France. Initiated in the 1970es, this database was first dedicated to the study of the relationships between plants and climate (phytoclimatology) at the scale of France. In the early 1980s it was central to the development of socio-ecology, which studies the statistical relationships between plant species. At present the SOPHY database contains more than 200,000 plots located in France and in some areas close to the French border. The managers of the database have developed methods and algorithms dedicated to the control of data quality and to the characterisation of socio-ecology and phytoclimatology. The principles and results obtained in these two domains using the SOPHY database are presented.