Facilities Support for the University of Colorado Herbarium

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The University of Colorado Museum Herbarium contains 435,000 catalogued specimens. It is the principal state repository of botanical specimens and information for Colorado, with representation balanced between vascular plants, lichens, bryophytes, fungi and algae. While its emphasis centers on the Colorado flora, the geohistorical nature of the phytogeography of the Rocky Mountain area has required it to reach out and develop excellence in other areas, particularly the Altai of Middle Asia, the Caucasus, and Arctic America and Kamtchatka. The curator's field work has made the herbarium a leading international repository for lichens and bryophytes, including those of the Galapagos Islands, Australia and New Guinea. The herbarium is listed as a National Resource Herbarium by a committee of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. This project provides funds to replace the static-aisle arrangement of the herbarium with a mechanically-assisted, mobile-aisle compactor system. Compactors are needed because of nearly filled cases and storage area. Over the past forty years, the herbarium has grown from the original 30,000 specimens at an average rate of 10,000 new specimens per year.