The Key to the Cabinets: Building and Sustaining a Research Database for a Global Biodiversity Hotspot

Digitization TCN: The Key to the Cabinets: Building and Sustaining a Research Database for a Global Biodiversity Hotspot

Project Summary

The southeastern USA is botanically rich, with areas of high global biodiversity in both the Appalachians and the coastal plain. Millions of plant specimens have been collected from this region over the past four centuries, and these specimens and the information they contain currently reside in museums, or herbaria, at universities across the area. Scientists study these specimens intently; however, it is difficult to retrieve information at broad geographic and taxonomic scales without pipelines to move the information electronically from the specimen to an accessible pool of data. SERNEC, or the SouthEast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections, is a large regional network of botanical experts and collections that has, through an NSF-sponsored research coordination network (RCN) project, developed critical skills in biodiversity informatics. The current project will allow the SERNEC group to make data available for over 3 million specimens using the latest photography and information capture tools and to engage citizen scientists and students to assist in transcribing and georeferencing this large dataset. The research generated through this project can help regional planners, land managers and communities to manage their natural resources in our ever-changing environment.

The interaction of scientists, citizen scientists, and students will provide a synergy to build a research tool of an unparalleled scale and scope. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop an imaged and databased set of over 3 million specimens from over 100 herbaria in one of the most floristically diverse regions in North America and a global hotspot of plant diversity. This will represent a valuable data source for research on the response of vegetation to climate change, human development, and rapid migrations of introduced species. This region has been a biodiversity hotspot for 100 million years and this project should encourage research on changes over time to develop better predictive models as areas of biodiversity change. By partnering with Symbiota, Notes from Nature, GEOLocate, Adler Planetarium, iPlant/TACC, and Specify, the project will develop ways to best integrate various efforts for data accessibility. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program, and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).

Citizen Science and Outreach Projects

FSU's Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium is pleased to announce a crowdfunding campaign (Dec 1–15) to raise $2000 to provision six 1-day citizen science events in 2015. The goal is to bring 100+ people from the Tallahassee region onto campus to learn about local biodiversity and the role of biodiversity specimens in research and education. The longer-term, bigger-picture goal is to develop a new model for sustaining biodiversity data creation by providing resources to the nation's 1500 museums, universities, field stations, and other institutions with similar collections so that they find it easier to do something similar. Those collections together house about a billion specimens—plants, fossils, birds, mammals, sponges, insects, etc. The plan is to establish a virtuous circle in which, as the collections engage more people in their local communities in the events, the crowdfunding support for those events grows. Visit http://spark.fsu.edu/Projects/121/Blazing-a-New-Trail-for-Sustainability-with-Citizen-Science to donate and for more information.

Project Leadership

Project Sponsor: Appalachian State University

Principal Investigator (PI): Zack Murrell

Collaboratoring Award PIs: Alan Harvey, Georgia Southern University; Alan Weakley, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; Alexander Krings, North Carolina State University; Allen Risk, Morehead State University; Andrea Weeks, George Mason University; Ashley Morris, Middle Tennessee State University; Austin Mast, Florida State University; Ben Montgomery, University of South Carolina Upstate; Brad Ruhfel, Eastern Kentucky University; Charles Horn, Newberry College; Daniel Stanzione, iPlant, University of Texas; Dayle Saar, Murray State University; Dixie Damrel, Clemson University; Donna Ford-Werntz, West Virginia University; Douglas Jensen, Converse College; Ed Gilbert, Arizona State University; Emily Gillespie, Marshall University; Eran Kilpatrick, University of South Carolina - Salkehatchie; Erika Gonzalez, Longwood College; George Johnson, Arkansas Tech University; Gerald Long, Francis Marion University; Hank Bart, Tulane University; James Carter, Valdosta State University; Joe Pollard, Furman University; Joey Shaw, University of Tennessee - Chattanooga; John Clark, University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa; John Nelson, University of South Carolina - Columbia; Jon Evans, University of the South; Katherine Mathews, Western Carolina University; Kelly Major, University of South Alabama; Kunsiri Grubbs, Winthrop University; L. D. Estes, Botanical Research Institute of Texas; Laura Whyte, Adler Museum; Leslie Goertzen, Auburn University; Lisa Krueger, University of Tennessee - Martin; Lisa Wallace, Mississippi State University; Mary (Maggie) Whitson, Northern Kentucky University; Mary Priestley, University of the South; Michael Windham, Duke University; Nelson Rios, Tulane University; Nico Franz, Arizona State University; Norris Williams, University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History; Rachel Jabaily, Rhodes College; Robert Guralnick, University of Colorado - Boulder; Shawn Krosnick, Tennessee Technological University; Thomas Sasek, University of Louisiana – Monroe; Timothy McDowell, East Tennessee State University; Travis Marsico, Arkansas State University - Jonesboro; Wendy Zomlefer, University of Georgia;

NSF Award Number

1410069

Project Website

http://sernec.appstate.edu/

Collaborators Map

https://www.idigbio.org/content/digitization-tcn-sernec-collaborator-map

Project Collaborators

Arkansas State University - Jonesboro
Arkansas Tech University
Auburn University
Botanical Research Institute of Texas at Vanderbilt University
Clemson University
Converse College
Duke University
East Tennessee State University
Eastern Kentucky University
Florida State University
Francis Marion University
Furman University
George Mason University
Georgia Southern University
Longwood College
Marshall University
Middle Tennessee State University
Mississippi State University
Morehead State University
Murray State University
Newberry College
North Carolina State University
Northern Kentucky University
Rhodes College
Tennessee Technological University
Tulane University
University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa
University of Florida
University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History
University of Georgia
University of Louisiana - Monroe
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
University of South Alabama
University of South Carolina - Columbia
University of South Carolina - Salkehatchie
University of South Carolina Upstate
University of Tennessee - Chattanooga
University of Tennessee - Martin
University of the South
Valdosta State University
West Virginia University
Western Carolina University
Winthrop University

Non-data Collaborators:
Adler Planetarium (Notes from Nature)
Arizona State University
iPlant, University of Texas