Web-Based Catalog and Mapping Application of Mexican Land Plant Collections at the University of Michigan Herbarium

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

Mexico, with nearly 30,000 plant species, represents one of the great centers of biodiversity in the world. Its diverse topography and climates harbor a complex mix of tropical, temperate, dry forest, and unique cloud forest floras. The Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, and particularly the dry tropical deciduous forests in western Mexico support one of the world's great arid-land floras. These rich floras are key to understanding plant evolution and biogeography, but are threatened by rapid changes in land and water use. The need for accurate and accessible biodiversity information on Mexico's flora has never been greater. In the last few decades a new and critical role for specimen collections has emerged. Degradation of global ecosystems and the accelerated pace of environmental change has led to massive loss of the World's biodiversity. Conservation of plant and animal species has thus become a major reason for research museums and herbaria. Most old collections from biodiversity-rich tropical regions are held ex situ, in museums and herbaria within developed countries. As developing nations build strong conservation programs they need to access information about organisms from their territory. For this reason, and to promote biodiversity research, more conscious efforts have to be made by the major, well-established institutions with large holdings of material to make this information widely available. The Michigan Herbarium with its nearly 1,700,000 specimens, is the seventh largest in the United States and the third largest university herbarium. It contains probably the second largest and most important collection of Mexican plants outside of Mexico, with approximately 240,000 land plant specimens. The project will catalog some 130,000 specimens over a three-year period. The data model used is SPECIFY, developed at the U of Kansas under the auspices of several federal agencies, currently in use for cataloging Michigan plants at the Herbarium. It will provide, via the Internet, a digital catalog of public access with specimen images and mapping serving capabilities that will allow users to perform searches and query spatially on particular areas on a map, download species lists and generate distributional data. The biological information contained in specimen collections constitutes an enormous but underutilized scientific resource. It is now possible through digital imaging and Internet technologies to easy and efficiently capture, store, and access specimen information, enormously reducing the potential damage to specimens from frequent loans to researchers throughout the world. This project will enhance the research value of Mexican plant collections at Michigan for botanists, ecologists, resource managers, teachers, students, institutions and Government agencies. The project proposed here will also enhance links between the University of Michigan and key Mexican scientific institutions like Mexico's National Commission for the Study and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) and the Instituto de Biologia at the National Autonomous University (UNAM), as well as other US herbaria with important Mexican collections. The database will be part of the REMIB (Mexican Network on Biodiversity Information, to which many international institutions belong) and the Species Analyst networks.