Tag Archives: plants

Harvard University: Undoing Empire, One Plant at a Time

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Harvard University: Undoing Empire, One Plant at a Time. “This summer, the Davis Center’s Imperiia team partnered with the Harvard Map Collection on the “Undoing Empire” project. The project was awarded a Harvard Library Advancing Open Knowledge grant to sustain work across a six-month period. It has three goals: 1) create a database of biodiversity in 19th-century Ukraine, 2) create an inclusive strategy for mapping historical places, and 3) develop best practices for producing data that can be preserved via the Harvard Geospatial Library and the Harvard Library (HOLLIS) catalog.”

Iowa State University: Finding art in the biological rhythms of trees

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Iowa State University: Finding art in the biological rhythms of trees. “Johnny DiBlasi, an assistant professor of art and visual culture, recently received a $10,000 grant from the Iowa Arts Council to develop ‘Transcoded Ecologies,’ a project that fuses artificial intelligence and plant biodata into an art installation that incorporates light and sound. The concept involves sensors that track data produced by tree saplings and an artificial intelligence program that translates the data into a dynamic artistic experience.”

SCOOP NZ: New Database Paves Way For Trees To Thrive In Face Of Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss

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SCOOP New Zealand: New Database Paves Way For Trees To Thrive In Face Of Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss . “The database, Tree Globally Observed Environmental Ranges or TreeGOER, for short, documents the observed environmental ranges for the majority of known tree species. It was developed at the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), an international research and development organization on trees, forests, agroforestry and landscapes. The open-access database is available on Zenodo and described in the journal Global Change Biology. TreeGOER documents the global environmental ranges for 51 variables for observed occurrences of 48,129 tree species.”

California Department of Natural Resources: DWR Collaborates With UC Davis to Expand Plant Database for Landscape Community

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California Department of Natural Resources: DWR Collaborates With UC Davis to Expand Plant Database for Landscape Community. “The Water Use Classification of Landscape Species database offers water use data for more than 3,500 plants and helps users find the perfect plants for their water needs. Using the Water Use Classification of Landscape Species database, users can search for plants by region, water requirement, and plant type.”

George Mason University: Explore Virginia’s natural communities using the Flora of Virginia app

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George Mason University: Explore Virginia’s natural communities using the Flora of Virginia app. ” The Foundation of the Flora of Virginia Project (the Flora) has launched a new guide to the Natural Communities of Virginia with the Flora of the Virginia smart-phone app.”

Scientific Reports: GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database documenting 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in landscape restoration

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Scientific Reports: GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database documenting 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in landscape restoration. “Developed primarily by combining data from GlobalTreeSearch with the World Checklist of Useful Plant Species (WCUPS), GlobUNT includes 14,014 tree species that can be filtered for ten major use categories, across 242 countries and territories.”

CBC: Little-known U of R plant collection blooming into the digital age

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CBC: Little-known U of R plant collection blooming into the digital age. “Mel Hart opens a wooden cabinet and carefully removes a light pink folder. Inside, a plant specimen dating back to the 1960s is pressed in place on a page, perfectly preserved. It’s one of nearly 70,000 plant specimens that Hart — the associate dean of student experience and engagement in the University of Regina’s faculty of science — works with in the school’s herbarium, a place where dried and dead plants are catalogued for scientific study.”

UNSW Sydney: AI reveals hidden traits about our planet’s flora to help save species

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UNSW Sydney: AI reveals hidden traits about our planet’s flora to help save species. “In a world-first, scientists from UNSW and Botanic Gardens of Sydney have trained AI to unlock data from millions of plant specimens kept in herbaria around the world, to study and combat the impacts of climate change on flora.”

FSU Research: Colonization influences worldwide distribution of plant specimens (Florida State University)

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Florida State University: FSU Research: Colonization influences worldwide distribution of plant specimens. “A study led by a Florida State University researcher that was published in Nature Human Behavior shows how colonization has contributed to the distribution of plants specimens stored in herbaria collections around the world.”

La Trobe University: Sex lives of orchids reads like science fiction

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La Trobe University: Sex lives of orchids reads like science fiction. That’s a heck of a headline to be indexing before 6am. “An international team of scientists including researchers at La Trobe University and the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria have created a global database of pollination data for almost 3000 orchid species.”

The Conversation: Social media snaps map the sweep of Japan’s cherry blossom season in unprecedented detail

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The Conversation: Social media snaps map the sweep of Japan’s cherry blossom season in unprecedented detail . “The hanami festival has been documented for centuries, and research shows climate change is making early blossoming more likely. The advent of mobile phones – and social network sites that allow people to upload photos tagged with time and location data – presents a new opportunity to study how Japan’s flowering events are affected by seasonal climate.”

Brussels Times: Belgium’s botanical gardens and arboretums unveil massive online database

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Brussels Times: Belgium’s botanical gardens and arboretums unveil massive online database. “The new website – a global first on this scale – makes 83,000 plants belonging to 25,000 different species and varieties from 25 botanical gardens and arboretums available at the click of a button. Visitors can view technical data sheets on each plant which detail their main characteristics, their origin and their location in the botanical garden in question.”

Globe Newswire: Gardens BC Kicks-Off Garden Tourism Season with the Launch of its New Website, Showcasing BC’s Premier Garden Destinations (PRESS RELEASE)

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Globe Newswire: Gardens BC Kicks-Off Garden Tourism Season with the Launch of its New Website, Showcasing BC’s Premier Garden Destinations (PRESS RELEASE). “From helping visitors identify popular amenities and activities found at each garden, such as gardening education, on-site cafés and gift shops, to picnic spots and wheelchair accessible grounds, the new Gardens BC website is a go-to resource for garden tourism, a family-friendly, leisure activity that continues to rise in popularity.”

University of Adelaide: Shining a light on dark web wildlife trade

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University of Adelaide: Shining a light on dark web wildlife trade. “A huge amount of wildlife is traded on the internet, with e-commerce marketplaces, private forums and messaging apps being the most popular means to sell and buy live animals, plants, fungi and their parts and products online.”

Phys.org: ‘Zero plant extinction’ is possible, says plant ecologist

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Phys.org: ‘Zero plant extinction’ is possible, says plant ecologist . “Like animals, many plant species are struggling to adapt to a human-dominated planet. However, plants are often overlooked in conservation efforts, even though they are cheaper and easier to protect than animals and play a pivotal role in bolstering our food, fuel and medical systems.”