The International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) has awarded the silver Engler Medal to the book “Biodiversity of West African forests - an Ecological Atlas of Woody Plant Species”, edited by Lourens Poorter, Frans Bongers, François Kouamé en William Hawthorne. The presentation of the award occurred recently during a reception of the Netherlands National Herbarium. Professor Pieter Baas, emeritus professor in plant systematics presented the medal to Lourens Poorter.
The IAPT introduced in 1996 the prestigious silver Engler medal, for excellent publications in the area of plant systematics or floristics. The award is named after the German botanist Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler.
The jury of internationally renown botanists was especially impressed by the way the authors have managed to integrate taxonomic, floristic, and ecological knowledge, by using plant databases and GIS techniques, and the way they made this information available to people interested in the conservation of West African forests. The book is one of the results of the EU project ECOSYN.
Poorter, L.; F. Bongers; F.N. Kouame & W.D. Hawthorne (eds.) (2004).
CABI Publishing, Oxford, UK, 528 pp. ISBN: 0851997341.