CSBR: Natural History: Consolidating, modernizing and harnessing the full potential of two herbaria collections at New Mexico State University

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces NM

Investigators

Abstract

New Mexico has five major plant museums or herbaria, which contain a combined 300,000 specimens of dried, pressed plants that are invaluable scientific resources used to promote education, research and public engagement. More than 30% (or 120,000) of these unique specimens are housed in two herbaria at the New Mexico State University (NMSU), one of which is the State's oldest herbarium. Together the NMSU herbaria represent the premier plant reference resource for the southern half of New Mexico, adjacent states, and northern Mexico. The goals of the project are to consolidate the NMSU herbaria, modernize their collections data management infrastructure, and update their management procedures, ultimately preserving the collections long-term, while broadening the data accessibility for education, research, and public use. With a multidisciplinary team of botanical researchers and local science educators, a series of academic and outreach initiatives will be implemented to increase literacy in the plant sciences within different sectors of the population. At NMSU, an official Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), researchers will pursue the recruitment and engagement of students, using hands-on experiences aimed at the care, protection and use of herbarium specimens and their associated data. Skills learned will improve participation in further education and training opportunities (e.g., graduate school) in STEM fields, while increasing downstream employment prospects. Through partnership with a local scientific education non-profit organization, the project will develop comprehensive botanical outreach materials to increase awareness and interest in natural history collections, plant biology and biodiversity, and biogeography among at least 1,500 K-12 students in an underserved Hispanic region located in southern New Mexico. Activities and expected outcomes include: 1) physical preservation, curation, and integration of herbarium specimens into a unified online digital herbarium (e.g., all specimens databased, barcoded, and imaged), 2) update of currently insecure, disparate databases of the herbaria into a single modern natural history collection management system, 3) acquisition of specimen data from a backlog of important uncurated specimens, 4) development of comprehensive botanical outreach and educational kits for local K-12 students, 5) training of undergraduate research assistants, and 6) implementation of professional workshops, and a crowdsourcing online campaign, all specifically tailored to a wide variety of stakeholders (e.g., students via NMSU's Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies, curators of other natural history collections on campus, land managers and owners, researchers, and citizen scientists). The collaborative nature of the project across campus and the region leverages knowledge and expertise in efficient and exciting directions, creating new research and outreach opportunities that make use of these important herbarium collections and their valuable and unique biodiversity information. Specimen data will be shared with and made available through iDigBio (idigbio.org). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.