Quantitative and qualitative Data on historical Vertebrate Distributions in Bavaria 1845

Abstract

Archival collections contain an underutilized wealth of biodiversity data, encapsulated in government files and other historical documents. In 1845, the Bavarian government conducted a comprehensive national survey on the occurrence of 44 selected vertebrate species across the country. The detailed expert responses from 119 forestry offices, totalling 520 handwritten pages, have been preserved in the Bavarian State Archives. In this study, we digitized, annotated, geographically referenced, and published these historical records, making them widely available as data for research and conservation planning. Our dataset, openly accessible through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Zenodo, contains 5,467 species occurrence records from 1845. Besides the binary presence/absence data, we have also published the original textual survey responses, which contain rich qualitative information, such as species abundances, population trends, habitats, forest management practices, and human-nature relationships. This information can be further processed and interpreted to address a range of questions in historical and contemporary ecology.