#36 - UNIVERSITY OF NORTH GEORGIA HERBARIUM PROJECT

Abstract

A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens that have been pressed, identified, mounted to backing, and stored. Large herbaria represent most collections available to researchers; however, these collections do not include smaller working herbaria due to a lack of digitization. Smaller herbaria face obstacles that include lack of funding/available time needed to process large numbers of specimens. During spring 2017, the University of North Georgia Herbarium Project (UNGHP) was awarded a Presidential Innovation Grant to alleviate these constraints by providing funding and staffing for the database. The goal of the UNG Herbarium Project is to process, database, and record all herbarium specimens into one central network. The plant specimens, some of which are approximately 30 years old, were collected by undergraduate students through academic courses such as Identification of Vascular Flora (BIOL 3329K) as well as student research projects. Herbarium specimens continue to be collected by undergraduate students each academic year. UNG research students, as well as public researchers, will have access to an online database which will contain properly curated and maintained specimens representative of the biodiversity within Northeast Georgia. The UNGHP also provides a framework by which new acquisitions can be included seamlessly into the existing natural history collection.