Overall objective of the project

The objective of the project was to digitize and image the labels of North American lichen and bryophyte specimens (Canada, the continental United States, and Mexico). This project was a contribution towards the Lichens, Bryophytes and Climate Change NSF Thematic Collections Network.

The role of the FLAS Herbarium

Our role as part of the consortium was to contribute with the digitization of the Florida collections that are important because they potentially fill gaps of the tropical and sub-tropical ecosystems that may be especially susceptible to climate change effects. We imaged and processed the specimens of the following Florida Herbaria:

Acronym Institution Approximate number

FLAS University of Florida 32,000 specimens

FTG Fairchild Tropical Garden 1,900 specimens

FTU University of Central Florida 1,500 specimens

USF University of South Florida 1,500 specimens

UWFP University of West Florida 320 specimens

This project was completed in about three years. The first phase dealt with specimen preparation and digitization in the FLAS herbarium. The second year of the project included editing the information that was uploaded in the portals, and populating different field of the database using the data generated by optical character recognition performed in the herbarium of the University of Madison, Wisconsin. The third year was devoted to finishing the edition of the data and georeferencing it.