9407795 Lane The R.L. McGregor Herbarium (KANU) is the primary documenting herbarium for the Great Plains Flora and other taxonomic and floristic works on Great Plains plants. It houses 408,015 specimens and library/archival items that were assembled over the past twelve decades and which are the basis for the existing 109,000-record Kansas Plant Database and the developing Central U.S. Plant Inventory Database (CUSPID), both of which will be Internet-accessible within three years, pending funding. The paleobotanical collections are also significant, contain a particularly high proportion of types, and are databased. The facilities improvement project proposed here will result in: Installation of a fire suppression and alarm system will prevent the currently overwhelming threat that the potential for fire presents. KANU is currently housed in a somewhat isolated, single-story building has a wooden roof, no internal fire walls, no fire alarms, no fire insurance (by Kansas state law), and only four hand-held fire extinguishers in 9,000 square feet of space. The building also houses electrical appliances and laboratory equipment that could throw sparks and an assortment of laboratory chemicals that could prove explosive. In the case of fire, the Clean Agent FM-200 fire suppression and detection system proposed here would sound audible alarms, notify the closest fire station, police, and designated responsible individuals, and if not prevented by human decision would release a dry chemical fire suppression agent in the affected area of the building. The agent is environmentally safe and nonpoisonous to humans; it is also non-wetting, so the specimens would not suffer water damage. Preservation of the collections of the R.L. McGregor Herbarium will ensure that the fundamental units of natural information, the specimens of organisms, will survive into the future, thus continuing to voucher the Kansas Plant Database, the KANU Paleobotanical Database, and the planned CUSPID.
