History of GeoWeed

GeoWeed is a member of the WIMS (Weed Information Management System) family of software. Our rough lineage:

According to The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the lineage began with a weed database that was initially developed by Danielle Bruno, who worked for the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Boise-Vale District in Idaho. The Nature Conservancy adopted that codebase in 2000 and developed it as WIMS, adding many enhancements. The primary programmer for WIMS was and is Barry Lavine.

In 2006, the Sonoma Ecology Center (working with The Nature Conservancy) chose WIMS as the initial code base for an expanded functionality database for use with Team Arundo del Norte. The primary programmers have been Barry Lavine, Marat Gubaydullin, and Zhahai Stewart.

The new database was initially called "WIMS 3 beta" and used by less than a dozen close partners. As it evolved away from TNC-WIMS and was beginning to be offered to the wider community, it was agreed that it should have a new name to avoid confusion with TNC WIMS, and the name GeoWeed was chosen in 2007. We continue to be a proud member of the WIMS family and to appreciate the contributions of The Nature Conservancy and WIMS.

WIMS continues to be supported and enhanced by The Nature Conservancy. GeoWeed might be considered a "fork" in the software development path, rather than a replacement for WIMS. As with most software development forks, GeoWeed evolved to meet a somewhat different vision or focus, as described below. As a very rough estimate, perhaps somewhat more than half the code in WIMS was modified or replaced, and a good deal more added along with new tables and forms.

GeoWeed continues to be free (as in free beer and as in free speech).


GeoWeed differences from WIMS

  • Adopted client/server split database design for robustness and flexible upgrades
  • Uses referential integrity constraints for data quality
  • Added Area Survey records to record multispecies area surveys, including absence data
  • Added photo documentation for Assessments and Surveys
  • New user interface with enhanced navigation and record filtering
  • More error checking and reporting, per record and whole database
  • Clarified or expanded semantics for collected data
  • More support for aggregation of local databases to larger merged databases

Data quality and aggregation continue to be major focuses in GeoWeed development.