In response to the increasing demand for capacity building on spatial analysis of biodiversity, Bioversity has just launched a training manual for practitioners who work with biodiversity data and want to develop spatial analysis skills. Spatial analysis is an important tool for gathering information about the geographic distribution of plant diversity  in specific areas or around the world.   The manual, authored by Scheldeman and Van Zonneveld is a terrific product. It relies on free software, explains step by step how to download it, use it, how to import data and perform quality control, produce distribution maps and many more useful spatial analyses. We are really impressed! You can download the manual  here. The manual is a part of other training materials available from Bioversity.