Collaborative Digitization of New York Botanical Garden Herbarium Specimens from Amazonian Brazil

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An award has been made to the New York Botanical Garden under the direction of Dr. Barbara M. Thiers for the enhancement of an online, virtual herbarium of plant specimens from Amazonian Brazil. The Garden holds over one-half million specimens from this biologically diverse and important country, and the grant will allow them to capture images and data from the specimens that can be accessed by researchers worldwide in studies of this flora. The Garden will work closely with Brazilian colleagues to ensure accuracy of the data for the specimens, and the electronic data will be made available to the Brazilian National Institute for Amazonian Research, which will support complementary efforts in that country. The data and information will be used by conservation biologists and botanists to document species distributions and inform decision makers dealing with this region, which contains many threatened species. Students in the US and Brazil will be involved in the project and will be trained in herbarium curation, database construction and management, and botanical research.