AUSTRALIA

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AUSTRALIAS VIRTUAL HERBARIUM

• A national collaborative model for integrated
  access to distributed biological information
• Jim Croft, Greg Whitbread
• Australian National Herbarium

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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

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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

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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

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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
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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
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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

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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

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There is some urgency

• Historical ignorance
• Australias 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 needs
  scientific knowledge
• what was there and where it occurred
• what is there now

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There is some urgency
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What is the problem?

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

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Specimen data from major herbaria
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Herbarium database status
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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

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Australias Virtual Herbarium

• On-line access to herbarium specimen information
  and botanical knowledge

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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?

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Data refinement
action
knowledge
information
Increasing refinement utility of data
data
observations
the real world
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Botanical Literature
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Herbarium Specimens
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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

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Specimen Data Capture
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A Herbarium Database Structure
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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
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AVH General Architecture
Clients
Common Web portals
Gateways
Databases
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Australias Virtual Herbarium

• Some views of the data

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Australian Plant Name Index (APNI)
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www.anbg.gov.au/apni
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http//www.chah.gov.au/avh.html
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Acacia
salicina
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Plant distribution analysis
Pultenaea species in eastern Australia
?
?
Incurved
Recurved
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Predictive Modelling
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Predictive Modelling
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Related Products

• On-line Flora information systems
• Generally regionally based
• Integrating
• Plant names
• Descriptive Flora treatments
• Illustrations
• Distributions

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Flora Information Systems
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Botanical illustrations
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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/
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Type Images on demand
High resolution image oftype specimen of
Austrobaileyadownloaded over the Internetfrom
the Herbarium of theNew York Botanical Garden
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Interactive Plant Identification
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Invasive Plant Notification
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Why it is working

• Communication - CHAH, few herbaria
• Collaboration - long-standing, data sharing,
  overcoming Australias Federal/State system
• Champions - management, public
• Lobbying and profile of herbaria
• Relevance of product
• And nowwe need to maintain commitment to project

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Summary

• Australias Virtual Herbarium
• A collaborative national project
• Making botanical information available
• Using modern technology
• Using cheap readily available components
• A model for regional and global cooperation

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Acknowledgements
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