Professor Ronald Good
Professor Ronald Good
Photo: Unknown
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Professor Ronald Good was an eminent Dorset Botanist who catalogued over 7,500
stands, and quarter of a million plants in Dorset between 1931 and 1939. This immense
collection of records has been stored at the
Centre For Ecology and Hydrology (CEH). Through the National Lottery Heritage Fund,
DERC has secured a grant to computerise this important study of Dorset.
In 1948 a Geographical Handbook of the Dorset Flora was published. This was
the result of an extensive botanical survey carried out by Professor Ronald
Good between the years 1931 and 1939. In doing so he collected plant lists
from over 7,500 stands and recorded over a quarter million plant records.
From these he mapped the distribution of some 600 of the 1,300 flowering
plants. His book was heralded in Nature (No. 4152, May 28, 1949) as an
original and valuable contribution to plant geography, and a signpost
to new pastures for the field botanist.
In an account given at the time (extracted from the Proceedings of Linnean
Society of London, Session 149, 1936-37.Pt 3, 23 September 1937) Good summarized
the main aims of the survey. “The immediate and primary aim
of the survey is the production of a large number of maps, all of the
same area, and each showing the distribution within that area, of a
single plant species, the maps being designed and compiled in such a
way that they can be directly and accurately contrasted. The ultimate
aim of the Survey is to make these comparisons and contrasts, and to
study the evidence which they afford as to the reasons which cause them.
It is anticipated that when this is done considerable light will be
thrown on the nature of the factors controlling the range of species,
and their presence and absence”. Good adopted a stand method for carrying
out his comprehensive survey. This identified plant associations within
a particular area and was a reversal of the usual botanical foray to
seek out particular plants and later make notes about its geographical
location. In collecting such a large list of stands, with an average
of 5-6 stands per square mile, Good managed to collate enough stands
to afford a comprehensive list of the vegetation of Dorset.
Professor Ronald
Good’s archive has long been recognized as a valuable account of the
county’s flora from the earlier part of this century - a time in which
the agriculture of the day and general land management before World
War II would undoubtedly differ from those methods used today, thus
making the archive an invaluable source of information for comparisons
within the rapidly changing ecological situation of today.
Dorset Environmental Records Centre secured a grant from the
Heritage Lottery Fund for the computerisation for all of Ronald Good’s
archive material relating to the Botanical Survey of Dorset. This
involved the computerisation of all site and species information from the original
diaries which are now kept by the
Centre For Ecology and Hydrology at Winfrith Technology Centre. In addition,
a complete set of ˝ inch maps which identify each stand's shape by means of
a cross or line have been scanned into the computer and rectified according
to the current Ordinance Survey projection enabling each stand to be marked
on to the present OS map.
As a result of this work carried out by DERC, individual species can be
mapped and compared with more recent data showing changes in plant distribution
over time. Good's site information, including habitat information, will
similarly be an invaluable source for comparison, for example with sites
of known conservation status such as SSSIs.
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Use of the archive
After two and a half years of data input, all of the 285,864 records collected
by Professor Good have been entered on to our database system and the 7575 stands
have been digitised on to GIS. The result of his work and the subsequent
computerisation of the data enables DERC to make the data-set available to
individuals and organisations for further work. Owing to the size and type
of the data-set, DERC envisages a wide range of potential projects varying
from the analysis of individual species information to wider investigations
of habitat type.
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Dorset Environmental Records Centre
