Transcript HISCOM99 - Australian National Botanic Gardens

Flora information Partnership
Barry Conn
Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney
HISCOM
Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria
Herbaria:
– centres of expertise in plant, algal & fungal biodiversity
• Australian collections - about 6.5 million
• Principal repositories of vouchered data
• Long-standing global and Australia-wide cooperative approach,
– specimen exchange and loan
– research across regional interests of herbaria
– publication
HISCOM
Herbarium Information Systems Committee
Advisory committee to:
Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria (CHAH)
Aim of HISCOM:
• to advise, share, develop and promote all aspects of digitisation of
herbarium information
• Representatives:
– all Government Herbaria
– University Herbaria representative
– New Zealand Herbaria representative
– ad hoc invitees: key partners (ABRS, ERIN) and collaborators
Digitisation of herbarium data
in Australia
• Since mid 1970s herbarium information data-processed
• Digitisation was driven by need for Census and Spatial data
Development of standards important
• In the 1980s HISPID - An herbarium specimen-label data
interchange standard was developed
•HISPID used with specimens exchanged and loaned between
Australian herbaria
Australian electronic plant, algal and fungal data: 1
Censuses
• Vascular plants – full Australian coverage
Nomenclator: Australian Plant Name Index
• Cryptogams – incomplete
• Fungi – incomplete, macrofungi current project for national census
• Algae – national census of marine algae; freshwater algae
Specimen data
• 40% of 6.5 million specimens in Australian Govt herbaria
Textual Descriptions:
vascular plants - 65-70% coverage
• Flora of Australia, plus monographs: 60%
• State floras (SA, NSW, Tas, Vic, ACT – 95-99% coverage
• Regional: Qld 62%, NT 70%, WA 40%)
non-vascular plants, algae, fungi - Overall very incomplete coverage
• National handbooks (Flora of Australia)
• Regional or state handbooks (Marine Benthic Flora of Southern
Australia; Lichens of SA; Mosses of SA)
Australian electronic plant, algal and fungal data: 2
Image data
• Image banks: few herbaria (CANB, PERTH)
• Other image banks: specialists, a number in Botanic Gardens, Societies,
other Govt agencies e.g. weeds
Identification tools
• Many - mostly using LucID and DELTA, other applications Tropical
Rainforest (Whiffin & Christophel); Cycad Pages (Hill)
• Notable on CD: Angiosperm families (World, Australian); Australian
Rainforest Trees, Eucalyptus; Acacia.
• On Web: WA Flora Catalogue, Cycad Pages, WattleWeb, NSW Flora
On-line
Australian eFloras and other digital products
Australian eFloras and other digital products
Australian eFloras and other digital products
Development of
Australia’s Virtual Herbarium (VAH)
Aim of Prototype:
– demonstrate functional capabilities of a distributed network on Internet
– demonstrate the collective capability of IT expertise in Australian herbaria
– highlight the custodianship and legitimate claim by Australian herbaria
to be stakeholders in Australian plant biodiversity projects
– highlight the need to resource data capture and delivery
– emphasise the essential underlying partnership
The Australian Government herbaria
Partners in the initial prototype
HISCOM
1999: Initial prototype - Acacia data from
all mainland herbaria via a single query
Common mulga Acacia aneura
The Australian Government herbaria
Partners in the initial prototype
Australia’s Virtual Herbarium
Stage 1 Web development
Benefits of AVH
over traditional herbarium practices
Maximises limited resources
• Sharing technological advances
– Continue sharing IT developments
• Move to sharing data: avoid duplication of effort
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Duplicate specimens
Image banks
Descriptions
ID tools: simple and complex
• Develop an on-line information system:
effectively electronic Flora of Australia
Benefits of AVH
over traditional herbarium practices
• Regional herbaria: distributed system or linkage to major
State
• State censuses: a thing of the past?
• Increased accessibility to collections by Community
• Publication - an On-line shared resource
Australia’s Virtual Herbarium
New opportunities
Involving Community and other User groups
• Increased collecting - gaps in plant distribution data obvious
• Increased use of current plant systematic information
New (and continued) partnerships
• Access to other data and information through partnerships of
mutual benefit to custodians
Capacity to link to International networks