This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Black Hills State University has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to (1) verify identifications and develop a database of all vascular plant specimens from the Missouri Plateau held by 14 herbaria in the region and (2) provide web access to data for plants from the region. The study area consists of approximately 1/12th of the land area of the continental United States. The construction of the database will be done with the help of undergraduate and graduate students in addition to professional botanists from the cooperating institutions. The activity includes the compilation and dissemination of information on one of the botanically least known areas of the nation. The database will be accessible to the public at http://herbarium.bhsu.edu.
Broader impacts of this activity will include a multitude of uses of the readily available information in the database. The project will make knowledge of the flora of the area more accessible to researchers throughout the world, regional land managers, and the general public. Workshops for middle school and secondary teachers as well as land managers will provide broader utilization of the results and allow more informed management of public and private lands in the region.
