The Catskill Flora Project had its genesis in the work of the the late Carl Brooks, who, for over thirty years - beginning in the early 1950s, kept detailed records of the occurance of vascular plants in the Catskills. He published several volumes of a Catskill Flora and Economic Botany through the NYS Museum. The project was never completed, and the records were deposited at Hartwick College. The ONHS assumed the responsibility for caryying the Catskill Flora Project foward in 1997. We adopted the 25 square kilometer grid developed for the NYS Breeding Bird Census. We have attempted to visist all of the census tracts and identify all of the vascular plants encountered with 4-6 hours of field work. Voucher specimens of all species (except threatened or endangered species) are prepared and preserved in the herbarium of ONHS.

• Document the vascular flora of the Catskills during a five year survey cycle.
• Develop a geo-referenced relational database of modern and historical records of Catskill plants.
• Develop and geographical information system with appropriate layers to analyze the geographic distribution of plant species and communitites with reference to soil, climate, and anthropogenic determinates.
• Compare the flora today with that observed by Brooks fifty years earlier.
• Publish Catskill Flora, a book aimed at a general audience that allows residents and visitors to identify the common and widespread plants and communities of the Catskill region. An annotated checklist of Catskill flora will be included.

We have completed four field seasons - a total of 65 field trips. Nearly 5,000 observations and 1,600 voucher specimens have been made and entered into the database. The geographic information system is operational and we presented the first three years of results at the Catskill Institute for the Environment symposium Catskill Ecosystem Health.