Historical distribution maps of vascular plants in Northern Europe

This dataset contains 1909 georeferenced and digitized distribution maps of vascular plants originally published in the 'Atlas of the distribution of vascular plants in northwestern Europe' (Hultén 1971). The digitized maps are provided as spatial polygon features (GeoJSON). The original distribution maps are based on an extensive data collection including obtaining spatial information from regional floras and herbarium records, as well as expert opinions. Data was collected by Eric Hultén from around 1935 to 1970 and contain all known records of the species. The collection dates of the herbarium specimens and the dates of the published records will have ranged from the 18th century to 1970. A detailed description of how the original atlas was compiled as well as the method used to georeference and digitize the distribution maps can be found in Arnell et al. (2025a). R scripts and functions to perform the different pats of the digitalization process can be found in the R package 'HultenRangeMaps' (https://github.com/ArnellM/HultenRangeMaps.gitOpens in a new tab). To aid spatial analyses, the package also provides a function to match the digitized distribution maps to the Swedish 10×10 km National grid (or any other grid stored as a polygon spatial feature). Citation: When using the digitized distribution maps , please cite both this dataset (Arnell et al. 2025b) and the accompanying data paper (Arnell et al. 2025a). Resolution and extent: The original maps have an effective resolution of 16×16 km and cover Scandinavia and Finland as well as parts of the Baltic countries, Germany and Russia. Data format: 1909 digitized distribution maps, GeoJSON files Data files: 1909 digitized distribution maps NOTE: The file names of the distribution map files are a combination of the the current accepted scientific name of the species and the original atlas map number (e.g. Lycopodium alpinum_0001.geojson). The current scientific names of the species in the dataset are retrieved from the Swedish Taxonomic Database, Dyntaxa (SLU Artdatabanken 2022). In Dyntaxa, hybrid species are denoted by the symbol ×. To facilitate file handling the symbol × has been replaced by the letter x in the database file names. Included in the database is an R script that allows users to change the letter x in the file names back to the symbol ×. Documentation files: README.txt HultenMetadata.csv - table containing details on the updated scientific nomenclature and manual edits of the digitized distribution maps fixFileNames.R - change the letter x in file names back to the symbol × References: Arnell, M., Auffret, A. G., & Hylander, K. (2025a) Historical distribution maps of vascular plants in Northern Europe. [Data paper]. Arnell, M., Auffret, A. G., & Hylander, K. (2025b). Historical distribution maps of vascular plants in Northern Europe (Version 1) [Data set]. Stockholm University. DOI: Available after publication. Hultén, E. 1971. Atlas of the distribution of vascular plants in northwestern Europe. Second edition. Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalts Förlag, Stockholm. SLU Artdatabanken. 2022. Dyntaxa - svensk taxonomisk databas [Dataset]. https://artfakta.se/metadata/dyntaxaOpens in a new tab. Accessed 2022-09-09.