Democratizing plant biodiversity data with coefficients of conservatism for the vascular flora of Tennessee and Kentucky

Floristic Quality Assessments (FQAs) measure an ecosystem's quality and can be applied to any ecosystem. FQAs consist of two parts: a species checklist and each species’ coefficient of conservatism (c-value). C-values are integers that describe a species’ tolerance to anthropogenically disturbed habitats. C-values should be applied to species per ecoregion; however, this can be difficult due to resource allocations, and therefore it is more common to apply c-values at the state level. Tennessee and Kentucky (TNKY) share many native species and ecoregions and lacked published c-values, putting TNKY in a prime position for combined c-value assignment. C-values were assigned to TNKY’s flora while utilizing as much pre-existing data as possible. Overall, c-values were successfully applied to 97% of TNKY’s flora (3,295 species). The c-values were then used to create educational modules to democratize biodiversity data. These were made publicly available and sent to nearby schools for potential inclusion into their curricula.