Monday, August 3, 2020
Imagine you are a biologist with a time machine. Now imagine throwing it out, because you don’t need it! Natural history collections, of which herbaria are some of the largest and most accessible, are the foundation of our historical baseline understanding for assessing anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity. Collections have always been static data resources, but with refined techniques and improved instrumentation, they now offer opportunities for novel data collection that is georeferenced, time-ordered, and open access. With new approaches to collections digitization and machine-learning algorithms, we can leverage centuries of scientific study to improve efforts at planetary resilience.