Collaborative Research: CSBR: Natural History Collections: Georeferencing U.S. Fish Collections: a community-based model to georeferencing natural history collections

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An award is made to use computing technology developed in connection with previous NSF support to collaboratively geospatially reference, a.k.a. georeference, (i.e., determine latitude and longitude coordinates for) the estimated two million ungeoreferenced fish species occurrence records currently in the now greatly enhanced and soon to be expanded Fishnet2 network of fish collection databases (http://www.fishnet2.net/). The records will be georeferenced using the Community Georeferencing System of the GEOLocate software platform based at Tulane University (http://www.museum.tulane.edu/geolocate/). Each coordinate determination will include a new polygon method for describing uncertainty, which will be compared to the more traditional point-radius-based uncertainties currently in wide use to inform best practices in future georeferencing projects. Experiments in crowd sourcing will also be performed on subset of the georeferenced work at Tulane as an education and outreach activity involving local high school students and Tulane undergraduates. Georeferencing natural history collection data is a critical step in a process of mobilizing biodiversity data that starts with digitizing collection records, continues through databasing and networking, and ultimately gives researchers remote access to the vast specimen and data resources of natural history museums. Having access to georeferenced specimen occurrence data allows researchers to address important scientific and societal questions in areas such as endangered species conservation, environmental restoration, and preparing for global climate change. The resource of georeferenced locality records provided by this project will serve several purposes, beyond its usefulness to the fish collection community. It can be used for georeferencing data for other groups of organisms, especially aquatic organisms, which were likely sampled at many of the same access points (e.g., in rivers near bridge crossings) or at the same time as many of the fish specimens. This project will reult in a compiled gazetteer of all georeferenced localities that is available to other collection digitization projects, including projects in the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (ADBC) program. The resource of georeferenced collection localities created through this project will also serve the fish collection and broader natural history collection community as a resource for cleaning taxonomic data, thanks to the map visualization of data it supports. Mapping specimen occurrences makes it easier for taxonomic experts to detect errors in specimen identity and distribution, resulting in more accurate taxonomic and geographic data. The education and outreach activities of this project will specifically target underrepresented minorities from New Orleans area schools in an effort to increase minority participation in natural history collection based research.