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Newberry College Part of a $2.5 Million National Science Foundation Grant
October 6, 2014
NEWBERRY, S.C. (Oct. 7, 2014) Newberry College is part of a group that has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a project that will digitize thousands of plant specimens into a database that can be used by researchers globally.
Newberry College is among nine South Carolina colleges and universities participating in the Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections (SERNEC), a consortium of 233 herbaria in 13 states in the Southeast region of the U.S. SERNEC was awarded the NSF grant to fund a project titled, The Key to Cabinets: Building and Sustaining a Research Database for a Global Biodiversity Hotspot. The SERNEC project is part of a larger nationwide effort coordinated by the iDigBio program at the University of Florida, which was created to improve understanding of how changes in biological diversity affect human societies.
Newberry College is honored to participate in a project that will make botanical research more accessible to the global scientific community, said Newberry College president Dr. Maurice Scherrens. The project will give new life to the wealth of information housed in herbaria throughout our region.
About the SERNEC Project
The Southeast region of the United States is botanically rich, with biodiversity hotspots in both the Appalachian mountain range and the coastal plain. Though millions of plant specimens have been collected from this region over the past four centuries, those specimens and data related to their collection are difficult to access. Most specimens reside in plant libraries, called herbariums, and are not readily available in a format that allows them to be easily searched, accessed or retrieved.
The SERNEC project, directed by Zack Murrell of Appalachian State University, will use the latest photography and information capture tools to digitize these specimens and the wealth of data related to them in order to build a regional virtual herbarium.
Newberry Colleges Role
Newberry Colleges role in the project will be to digitize the more than 20,000 specimens in the Colleges herbarium beginning in 2016. Dr. Charles Horn, professor of Biology and curator of the Newberry College herbarium, will lead the Colleges contribution to the SERNEC project. He has personally collected many of the specimens in the Colleges herbarium and has discovered species unique to the Southeast region that were previously unknown to researchers.
This work will allow for botanists around the world to more effectively explore one of the most specimen-rich regions of Earth, Horn said. It will also help regional planners, land managers and local communities to manage their natural resources. In addition, we hope the project will foster collaboration among scientists, citizen scientists and students.
About iDigBio
The $2.5 million SERNEC grant was made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program coordinated by the University of Floridas iDigBio program. All data resulting from the various national projects will be available through a specimen portal located at iDigBio.org/portal.
SERNEC Project Member Schools
Clemson University University of South Carolina-Columbia
Converse College University of South Carolina-Salkehatchie
Francis Marion University University of South Carolina-Upstate
Furman University Winthrop University
Newberry College
More Information
About the Newberry College herbarium:
http://www.newberry-college.net/chorn/Herbar/Index.htm
About SERNEC: http://sernec.appstate.edu/
About iDigBio: https://www.idigbio.org
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Newberry College is among nine South Carolina colleges and universities participating in the Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections (SERNEC), a consortium of 233 herbaria in 13 states in the Southeast region of the U.S. SERNEC was awarded the NSF grant to fund a project titled, The Key to Cabinets: Building and Sustaining a Research Database for a Global Biodiversity Hotspot. The SERNEC project is part of a larger nationwide effort coordinated by the iDigBio program at the University of Florida, which was created to improve understanding of how changes in biological diversity affect human societies.
Newberry College is honored to participate in a project that will make botanical research more accessible to the global scientific community, said Newberry College president Dr. Maurice Scherrens. The project will give new life to the wealth of information housed in herbaria throughout our region.
About the SERNEC Project
The Southeast region of the United States is botanically rich, with biodiversity hotspots in both the Appalachian mountain range and the coastal plain. Though millions of plant specimens have been collected from this region over the past four centuries, those specimens and data related to their collection are difficult to access. Most specimens reside in plant libraries, called herbariums, and are not readily available in a format that allows them to be easily searched, accessed or retrieved.
The SERNEC project, directed by Zack Murrell of Appalachian State University, will use the latest photography and information capture tools to digitize these specimens and the wealth of data related to them in order to build a regional virtual herbarium.
Newberry Colleges Role
Newberry Colleges role in the project will be to digitize the more than 20,000 specimens in the Colleges herbarium beginning in 2016. Dr. Charles Horn, professor of Biology and curator of the Newberry College herbarium, will lead the Colleges contribution to the SERNEC project. He has personally collected many of the specimens in the Colleges herbarium and has discovered species unique to the Southeast region that were previously unknown to researchers.
This work will allow for botanists around the world to more effectively explore one of the most specimen-rich regions of Earth, Horn said. It will also help regional planners, land managers and local communities to manage their natural resources. In addition, we hope the project will foster collaboration among scientists, citizen scientists and students.
About iDigBio
The $2.5 million SERNEC grant was made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program coordinated by the University of Floridas iDigBio program. All data resulting from the various national projects will be available through a specimen portal located at iDigBio.org/portal.
SERNEC Project Member Schools
Clemson University University of South Carolina-Columbia
Converse College University of South Carolina-Salkehatchie
Francis Marion University University of South Carolina-Upstate
Furman University Winthrop University
Newberry College
More Information
About the Newberry College herbarium:
http://www.newberry-college.net/chorn/Herbar/Index.htm
About SERNEC: http://sernec.appstate.edu/
About iDigBio: https://www.idigbio.org
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