Alabama's Biodiversity Heritage: Expanding and Promoting Access and Use of a Regional Important Botanical Collection

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The Troy University Herbarium houses more than 46,000 plant specimens, making it one of the largest and more diverse collections in Alabama. It is especially rich in specimens from the East Gulf Coastal Plain ecoregion, a top biodiversity hotspot in the United States and considered endangered. The herbarium is an irreplaceable repository of botanical diversity that documents the occurrence of plants both past and present. This project will secure and alleviate overcrowding of specimens. It will improve and modernize access to specimens and allow for wider dissemination of the information they convey to researchers, educators, students, and the general public. The outcomes will facilitate research in basic and applied sciences, such as conservation biology, agriculture, and resource management. Educational programs will benefit students and educators through workshops focused on how the new resources can be used to increase interest in biodiversity research. This NSF-funded project will provide a mobile storage system and herbarium cabinets, which will allow for expansion and growth of the TROY Herbarium. Specific activities include (1) installation of new herbarium cases and a mobile storage system; (2) acquisition of new digitization equipment; (3) curation of over 10,000 legacy specimens; and (4) engaging teachers and students in southeast Alabama through workshops and digital resources. New imaging equipment will be used to digitize and improve accessibility for 46,000 vouchered specimens and more than 10,000 legacy specimens that will be available via the Alabama Plant Atlas and shared with national and international resources including iDigBio (idigbio.org) and the Global Biodiversity Information Faciilty (GBIF). Non-vascular plant specimens will be made available through the North American Bryophyte Herbarium portal and the North American Lichen Herbarium portal. As part of the project, reorganization and nomenclatural updates will be made to facilitate access and secure the collection for future use. Summer workshops on plant identification, classification and herbarium procedures for Alabama Science in Motion (ASIM) and the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative (AMSTI) will provide needed training for elementary and secondary teachers. Curators, serving as mentors for teachers and students using iNaturalist, will provide lasting outreach to the community.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.