Digitization of the Greenland Vascular Plant Herbarium as a Unique Research Infrastructure to Study Arctic Climate Change and Inform Nature Management

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

The Greenland Vascular Plant Herbarium at the Natural History Museum of Denmark represents the largest collection of botanical specimens from Greenland and includes some of the oldest known specimens collected in the Arctic, as well as voucher specimens collected over time from important botanical expeditions. High-resolution digital images for all specimens in this collection have recently been obtained and accompanying specimen label data have been transcribed. Digitizing this invaluable botanical collection from Greenland allows us to make nearly 170,000 Arctic plant specimens available online to researchers, amateur botanists, nature managers and advisers, as well as the general public. Improved access to this museum collection will facilitate global change research and nature management in Greenland’s rapidly changing Arctic environment and will help promote the value of digitizing Arctic specimens maintained in natural history collections worldwide. Current and potential applications of Arctic herbarium material in climate change studies, and the biases and limitations of such herbarium material for these studies are discussed.

Related collections

Most cited references 35

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Widespread sampling biases in herbaria revealed from large-scale digitization

Barnabas Daru, Daniel S. Park, Richard B Primack … (2018)

0 comments Cited 123 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Herbarium specimens demonstrate earlier flowering times in response to warming in Boston.

Richard B Primack, J Primack, Richard Miller … (2004)

Museum specimens collected in the past may be a valuable source of information on the response of species to climate change. This idea was tested by comparing the flowering times during the year 2003 of 229 living plants growing at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, with 372 records of flowering times from 1885 to 2002 using herbarium specimens of the same individual plants. During this period, Boston experienced a 1.5°C increase in mean annual temperature. Flowering times became progressively earlier; plants flowered 8 d earlier from 1980 to 2002 than they did from 1900 to 1920. Most of this shift toward earlier flowering times is explained by the influence of temperature, especially temperatures in the months of February, March, April, and May, on flowering time. Plants with a long flowering duration appear to be as useful for detecting responses to changing temperatures as plants with a short flowering duration. Additional studies using herbarium specimens to detect responses to climate change could examine specimens from specific, intensively collected localities, such as mountain peaks, islands, and unique habitats.