TROY— Two Troy University biology professors have received funding for an ambitious project to create high-resolution digital images of 100,000 plant specimens from across the East Gulf Coastal Plain, then make them available to scientists and students via the World Wide Web.

Dr. Michael Woods and Dr. Alvin Diamond, curators of the Troy University Herbarium and faculty members in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences are co-project directors of The Deep South Plant Specimen Imaging Project (DSPSIP), funded by a two-year, $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Troy University and its current project partners – Florida State University, Auburn University, the University of South Alabama and the University of Southern Mississippi -- will share the NSF funding in a collaborative effort to bring online a vast quantity of botanical information to aid researchers.

“Ultimately, this project will produce a more complete, user-friendly picture of plant distribution and variation across the East Gulf Coastal Plain,” Dr. Woods said.

The region stretches from just west of Gainesville, FL, into the Florida Panhandle to New Orleans and about 175 miles inland. Drs. Woods and Diamond said the region is home to no fewer than 2,864 native plant species—125 of which are found nowhere else on Earth. In addition, the region is considered one of the nation’s top six hot spots for both biodiversity and species endangerment, the professors said.

“This means the imaging project carries a special urgency for this imperiled eco-region, because while the area may hold some answers for researchers, it is to date, one of the least documented in the nation,” Dr. Diamond said.

Of the 100,000 plant specimens for which high-resolution digital images will be created, 20,000 will be from the Troy Herbarium, the TROY professors said.  These 20,000 images will be available on the Troy Herbarium web site.  To ensure the broad distribution of the images, DSPSIP will submit all 100,000 images to web sites such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility portal and “MorphBank,” an extensive repository of flora and fauna images paired with searchable digital annotations by expert biologists. MorphBank enables researchers to access images from different herbaria instantly.

In addition, students of all ages will play a key role. DSPSIP will engage students in specimen-based research, and will develop and implement a lesson package to introduce those at the middle- and high-school levels to the distinctiveness of East Gulf Coastal Plain plant life and the process and value of scientific specimen collecting.

The Troy University Herbarium was established in 1954 by Dr. Robert Dietz, who served as curator of the collection until 1986.  In 1987, the herbarium, which consisted of approximately 1,000 specimens, was closed and all of the specimens were destroyed.  In 1997, the Troy Herbarium was reestablished by Dr. Woods and Dr. Diamond.  Since 1997, the collection has grown to nearly 24,000 specimens, with a recent growth rate of 3,000 additional specimens per year.  This makes the Troy Herbarium the fastest-growing herbarium in the southeastern United States.  Currently, 90 percent of all Alabama specimens deposited in the Troy Herbarium have been compiled into a database 

“This database, along with the completion of the imaging project in 2008 will make the Troy Herbarium specimens the most electronically accessible in Alabama,” Dr. Woods said.

Dr. Austin Mast and Dr. Gil Nelson of the Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium at Florida State University will serve as the project coordinators for DSPSIP.

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