Andorra Joins Spain and France to Build Digital Platform for Pyrenean Flora

Andorra, Spain and France will work together to build the first digital reference platform for Pyrenean flora, a three-year project presented in Boltaña, in the Spanish province of Huesca. The initiative, known as PHYLOFLORA-PYR, involves Andorra Recerca + Innovació (AR+I) as a collaborating partner representing Andorra, alongside organisations from Spain and France.

The project aims to gather and harmonise botanical information from across the mountain range and make it available to researchers, managers, teachers and the public through a freely accessible platform. Over the coming three years, partners will share more than 20,000 herbarium specimens and create a database combining species descriptions, genomic data, reference images and distribution records. Indicators linked to climate change will also be developed from the genetic characteristics and distribution of plants.

The consortium brings together 11 partner organisations and 20 associates from the three countries, with the goal of supporting coordinated management of Pyrenean biodiversity. The project is led by the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC) and is 65% co-financed by the European Union through the Interreg VI-A Spain-France-Andorra programme (POCTEFA 2021-2027). Andorra's participation is funded entirely by AR+I.

At the presentation, participants exchanged herbarium specimens in a symbolic gesture of the cross-border cooperation the project seeks to consolidate. The event also opened the first PHYLOFLORA Symposium, a three-day meeting devoted to the project's technical aspects and to establishing working foundations between the participating institutions.

Clara Pladevall, a researcher in AR+I's biological sciences group who took part in the inaugural event, said it was a privilege for Andorra to be involved in such an ambitious project, noting that years of work on cooperation projects had secured a role for knowledge generated in the principality. She added that AR+I's participation ensures Andorra's perspective is reflected in a project where governance matters greatly, and argued for coordinated efforts with neighbouring territories.

Pablo Tejero, the project coordinator and curator of the JACA Herbarium, said that until now there had been no unified criteria for classifying and referring to Pyrenean plants, which he described as the foundation of ecosystems and a key pillar of the primary sector. He said the project was highly relevant for coherent management and conservation of biodiversity in a territory where species do not recognise administrative borders.