1 / 55

AUSTRALIA’S VIRTUAL HERBARIUM

AUSTRALIA’S VIRTUAL HERBARIUM. A national collaborative model for integrated access to distributed biological information Jim Croft, Greg Whitbread Australian National Herbarium. Outline of presentation. Background to the AVH What is the AVH ? Aspects of the AVH Plant names, specimens

tahir
Download Presentation

AUSTRALIA’S VIRTUAL HERBARIUM

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. AUSTRALIA’S VIRTUAL HERBARIUM A national collaborative model for integrated access to distributed biological information Jim Croft, Greg Whitbread Australian National Herbarium

  2. Outline of presentation • Background to the AVH • What is the AVH ? • Aspects of the AVH • Plant names, specimens • Plant images, plant identification tools • Uses and users of the AVH • Botanical research • Community projects • Summary

  3. What is a Virtual Herbarium? • The physical resources and biological information of a herbarium represented digitally • On-line access to herbaria and to botanical information managed by herbaria • Integrated access to botanical information from various sources in a herbarium and other on-line botanical information

  4. What is the AVH? • A collaborative project of the Australian Herbarium community • Digital • Collaborative • On-line • Integrated • Partnership and shared access • Real-time access • Shared access to common authority files • Shared data-hosting, archiving and backup • Co-ownership

  5. Where is the AVH? • Spread across Australian herbaria • Data distributed; resides with custodians • Each herbarium has a portal to receive requests and to deliver data • A common single query AVH interface in each herbarium polls all herbaria Major Australian Herbaria

  6. AVH Partners State Herbarium of South Australia Queensland Herbarium Australian National Herbarium Northern Territory Herbarium Tasmanian Herbarium Industry Partner: KE Software National Herbarium of Victoria National Herbarium of New South Wales Western Australian Herbarium Australian Biological Resources Study

  7. Why is there an AVH? • Pressure on Herbaria to work more efficiently • Demand for access to larger amounts of data • Demand to access data more quickly • Demand to view data in different ways • Pressure on herbaria to appear and to be more responsive to community needs

  8. Potential users of the AVH • The participating herbaria have access to all the data at the highest precision • Public access filter restricts access to work in progress, sensitive locality data, etc. • Research and education • Public general interest • Access to conservation agencies, land managers, environmental decision makers

  9. There is some urgency … • Historical ignorance • Australia’s biodiversity has been damaged • At risk from inappropriate land management practices • We know a lot about what not to do • Redressing the damage, and managing better for the future, requires sound information • Sustainable natural resource management needsscientific knowledge • what was there and where it occurred • what is there now

  10. 1907 2002 There is some urgency …

  11. What is the problem? • > 20,000 species of higher plants • > 64,000 available names • Extensive synonymy (4 names per plant) • Many alternative taxonomic concepts • 8 major government-funded herbaria • Similar number of university herbaria • > 6,500,000 specimens in Aust. herbaria • 50-100 data elements per specimen • Several Kb per specimen (excl. images)

  12. Specimen data from major herbaria

  13. Herbarium database status

  14. The AVH Agreement • $10M over 5 years to database all major Australian herbarium collections • $10 million: - $ 4 million Commonwealth - $ 4 million State/Territory - $ 2 million private • Initial focus on capture of herbarium specimen data • Ultimate aim a complete flora information system

  15. Australia’s Virtual Herbarium On-line access to herbarium specimen information and botanical knowledge

  16. What do we want to know? • What species does a plant belong to? • What is its name? • What other species is it related to? • What does it look like? • Where does it grow? • Where might it grow? • What other species grow with it? • What species grow in a defined area? • How did they get there?

  17. Policy & strategy • government • corporate • individual • Envir. decision making • conservation • restoration biology • resource mgmt • utilisation Data refinement action knowledge information Increasing refinement & utility of data data observations the real world

  18. Botanical Literature

  19. Herbarium Specimens

  20. Specimen data Core information is from herbarium specimens Collections data: • Scientific name • Collection date • Collector name & number • Location • Soils • Habitat (incl. topography) • Vegetation community • Associated species • Plant features, e.g. colour

  21. Specimen Data Capture

  22. A Herbarium Database Structure

  23. How does the AVH work? Need for common semantic schema recognized Standard syntax Race to database HISPID Botanical ontology? Need for semantic standard recognized Exchange Distributed query Evolution of the AVH

  24. AVH General Architecture Databases Gateways Common Web portals Clients

  25. Australia’s Virtual Herbarium Some views of the data

  26. Australian Plant Name Index (APNI)

  27. www.anbg.gov.au/apni

  28. http://www.chah.gov.au/avh.html

  29. Acacia salicina

  30. Incurved Incurved Recurved Plant distribution analysis Pultenaea species in eastern Australia ? ? Recurved Incurved

  31. Predictive Modelling

  32. Predictive Modelling

  33. Related Products • On-line Flora information systems • Generally regionally based • Integrating: • Plant names • Descriptive Flora treatments • Illustrations • Distributions

  34. Flora Information Systems

  35. Botanical illustrations

  36. Portraits of Plant species National Plant Photograph Index Search on-line Some digital imagesavailable 35,000 images ofAustralian plantsand vegetation www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/photo-collection/

  37. Type Images on demand High resolution image oftype specimen of Austrobaileyadownloaded over the Internetfrom the Herbarium of theNew York Botanical Garden

More Related