An award to the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) will support the purchase and installation of mobile storage units and herbarium cabinets for the BRIT-SMU-VDB Herbarium, which contains over one million specimens representing much of the Earth's plant diversity. These specimens are widely used by students and professionals as well as the general public. Compactorization of the collections with modern storage equipment will allow the incorporation of a large backlog of boxed specimens of great scientific value and will provide a safe environment for their preservation.
Broader impacts of this project include greatly improved accessibility to BRIT's collections for the scientific community and students, as well as new opportunities to engage the public. Expanded educational programs and rotating exhibits will illustrate the value of systematic herbarium collections. The expansion of the herbarium made possible by the construction of BRIT's new, "green," LEED-certified building will facilitate long-term growth of the collections and create a superior environment for herbarium research, education, and outreach. A fully compactorized herbarium, with a smaller footprint, using recycled steel and manual power, is a "green" herbarium. This award presents a timely and relevant opportunity to engage the public and increase appreciation for science in the service of conservation of biodiversity and natural resources.
This grant provided support for the purchase and installation of mobile storage units and cabinets for the Herbarium at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), in Fort Worth. A herbarium is a museum of preserved plants that are used for education and research. Each herbarium specimen is made up of a pressed, dried plant, mounted on archival paper, and affixed with a label providing the name of the plant and information on when and where it was collected, and by whom. Specimens are ordered by taxonomy and geographic origin and stored in labeled folders in cabinets, safe from light and insects. Herbaria across the globe provide a permanent record of the diversity of the Earth's flora. The BRIT Herbarium contains over 1 million plant specimens, representing much of the world’s plant diversity, making this approximately the 10th largest herbarium in the country and one of the largest databanks for research in plant distribution and evolution in the southern US. Herbarium specimens are valuable to many kinds of research because they represent over 200 years of plant records documenting historical ecology, plant distribution, movement of invasive species, human disturbance, urban encroachment, and climate change. BRIT’s specimens are widely used by students and professionals as well as the general public, with a growing selection now available online at atrium.brit.org. BRIT has a commitment to sharing primary biodiversity data with the global scientific community as well as academics, policy-makers, teachers, and students of all ages. The expansion of the herbarium was made possible in part by the construction of BRIT's new, "green," building, platinum-certified in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design by the U.S. Green Building Council. This new building will enable long-term growth of the collections and has created a superior environment for herbarium research, education, and outreach. Support from the US National Science Foundation’s Improvements to Biological Research Collections program allowed the purchase of 188 new herbarium cabinets and their corresponding compactor carriages, which ride on rails set into the herbarium floor. An entire row of cabinets (weighing thousands of pounds) can be easily moved by turning a hand-crank on the row’s end-panel, creating an aisle wherever so desired. A compactorized herbarium has a smaller footprint, requiring less square footage while still allowing easy access to the collections. A fully compactorized herbarium, using recycled steel and manual power, is truly a "green" herbarium… even if the plant specimens themselves tend to be closer to brown in color. With grant support from NSF and other foundations and individuals, a total of 377 new cabinets were purchased for the new BRIT Herbarium building (51 single-width and 326 double-width). This more than doubles the previous cabinet space at BRIT and provides a modern, safe, archival environment for the continued preservation and growth of the collections. This added space also allows incorporation of a large backlog of boxed specimens of great scientific value that were not previously available for study because of cabinet space constraints. The herbarium space created by full compactorization allowed the most efficient use of floorspace in the herbarium "zone" of the building, thereby allowing a substantial portion of this zone to be used as spaces dedicated to the human activities of curation, research, and outreach, including digitization projects for broader public use of specimen data. These spaces include staff and volunteer workspaces for curatorial activities, short-term visiting researcher carrels to accommodate at least 15 persons, a dedicated digitization room, and a plant mounting room (Plant Preservation Studio) which is visible to all building visitors through two observation windows in the public area off the lobby. This latter space allows the public to observe the process of turning a dried plant into a work of art and science by volunteers who glue plants to paper to create a herbarium specimen. The area around these windows is one of several in the building with interpretive signage and exhibits focusing on the importance of plant research and conservation. Direct broader impacts of the proposed NSF-supported herbarium compactorization include greatly improved accessibility to the collections for the scientific community and students, as well as new opportunities to engage the public in a way BRIT has never before been able to achieve. Expanded educational programs and rotating exhibits are now being created to illustrate the value of herbarium collections with engaging and timely examples of how we use them and what we do, and the herbarium itself now provides an excellent opportunity for tour groups, who represent a very broad cross-section of the American public, to understand the utility and vitality of a working herbarium collection and how it enables scientific discovery that affects us all.
