This project will allow the expansion of The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) in order to accommodate an additional 160,000 specimens of algae, fungi and palms. The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium is a National Systematics Research Resource Center containing approximately 7.3 million reference specimens of plants and fungi. It is the largest of the approximately 650 herbaria in the U.S. Herbarium specimens hold data that researchers use to re-create past landscapes and predict how vegetation will change over time. Specimens also contain nearly limitless information about the genetic makeup of organisms, their reproductive patterns, their adaptations for different types of habitats, and their relationships to other organisms. All of these data are urgently needed to contribute to the solutions to four key societal needs, namely sustainable food production, ecosystem restoration, biofuel production and improvement in human health. Solutions to these problems will require integration of as wide a range of biodiversity data as possible, along with information from earth and social sciences. The algae, bryophytes, fungi and palms are all under-studied groups with demonstrated but incompletely documented ecological and economic importance. Approximately 12 college students or recent graduates, hired as interns, will make up the largest proportion of the paid work force for this project, providing an important bridge activity between college and graduate school or career for these young adults. Additionally, members of the public will be invited to participate in this project by transcribing the labels of digitized specimens using on-line crowd sourcing applications. Especially targeted for this activity are formerly incarcerated citizens who are seeking re-entry into the workforce.
Throughout its 120 years of existence the NYBG Herbarium has grown steadily through collections made by staff members and collaborators, exchange, and incorporation of orphaned herbaria. This is one of the most frequently consulted herbaria in the world. During the past five years, more than 117,000 specimens have been sent on loan, visitors have spent 12,616 days using the collection, and NYBG Herbarium specimens have been cited in at least 1,200 publications. Eleven years after moving into a new herbarium building that was designed for 20 years of growth, the space allotted for collections of algae, bryophytes, fungi and palms is now insufficient for proper storage of these resources due to unexpected growth (algae, bryophytes and fungi) and inadequate shelving (palms). In order to accomplish the goal of housing all specimens according to accepted best practices and making the specimens and data derived from them available to the scientific community, this project will create an additional 2,798 cubbyholes of herbarium storage space by replacing 34 open shelving units with extra tall herbarium cabinets on existing compactors on the first floor of the herbarium building. This space will be sufficient to accommodate the specimens that cannot currently be filed and allow for five years of future growth. As part of the relocation of specimens into the new space, the curation of specimens will be improved and 92,000 specimens will be digitized. More information about NYBG and its outreach programs is available at: www.nybg.org.
