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AVH - Australia’s Virtual Herbarium Logo

AVH - Australia’s Virtual Herbarium Logo. Jim Croft Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research Australian National Herbarium. Australia’s Virtual Herbarium: storing and interchanging botanical data on-line. Jim Croft Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research Australian National Herbarium

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AVH - Australia’s Virtual Herbarium Logo

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  1. AVH - Australia’s Virtual Herbarium Logo Jim Croft Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research Australian National Herbarium

  2. Australia’s Virtual Herbarium:storing and interchangingbotanical data on-line Jim Croft Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research Australian National Herbarium jrc@anbg.gov.au http://www.anbg.gov.au/jrc/

  3. AVH - The Big Questions The 6 Ws: Who? What Where? When? Why? hoW?

  4. AVH - The Big Questions What is the AVH? Why should the AVH happen? Where does the AVH happen? Who does the AVH happen for? When does the AVH happen? hoW does the AVH happen? Whence the AVH?

  5. What is a Herbarium? • A physically and administratively secure building • A managed archival scientific collection of preserved plant specimens • A research environment and resource for botanical systematic and taxonomic resource • A taxonomic, spatial and temporal information base for botanical research, environmental decision-making and public information

  6. Collecting specimens

  7. Platyzoma micropyllum

  8. Platyzoma micropyllum

  9. Herbarium Specimens

  10. Herbarium Specimens

  11. Compactus storage units

  12. Compactus storage units

  13. Botanical Library

  14. Botanical literature

  15. Specimen Data Capture

  16. Public Reference Herbarium

  17. 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

  18. What is the AVH? • A collaborative project of the Australian Herbarium community, providing: • Partnership and shared access to each others data • Real-time access to current working data • Shared access to common authority files • A shared development environment • Opportunity to shared data-hosting, archiving and off-site backup. • Co-ownership of the final product

  19. The pilot: distribution of Acacia aneura, mulga

  20. The pilot: distribution of Acacia aneura, mulga

  21. Acacia aneura: Distribution of specimens from each herbarium

  22. Overlays

  23. Geocode accuracy Survey data

  24. A Herbarium Database Structure

  25. 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 be and appear more responsive to community needs

  26. What is the Problem? • > 18,000 species of higher plants • > 64,000 available names • Extensive synonymy (4 names per plant) • 8 major government-funded herbaria • Similar number of university herbaria • > 6,500,000 specimens Aust. herbaria • 50-100 data elements per specimen • Several Kb per specimen (excl. images)

  27. Where is the data? • In each herbarium (largest 1.3 million specimens) • Pooling data centrally not acceptable for operational, political and emotional reasons. • Therefore we need a distributed data management and access solution, maintaining and ensuring custodial responsibility

  28. Where is the data? • Images compound the problem • Several Kb and up for live plant images (possibly 100,000 available) • Specimen images need high resolution, up to 20 Mb or more • Need to be sub-sampled for web display • At least 100,000 type specimens • Ideally all 6.5 million specimens should be done

  29. Where is the AVH? • Spread across Australian herbaria • Data distributed; resides with custodians • Each herbarium has a portal to receive requests to and deliver data from its database • Each herbarium hosts a common AVH query interface that polls all herbaria and integrates and returns data as a single query

  30. Major Australian Herbaria

  31. Who are the participants? 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

  32. Holdings of Aust. Herbaria

  33. National Herbarium Collectiondatabase status

  34. Who runs the AVH? • The Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria (CHAH). • The Herbarium Information Systems Committee (HISCOM) • IT staff at each herbarium (technology) • Botanical staff at each herbarium (content) • Scientific staff at each herbarium (validation)

  35. Aust. & NZ Environment & Conservation Council (ANZECC) • Government committee of Commonwealth and State/Territory Environment Ministers • Accepted that the community wanted the product • Funding options and regional support • Working group • Project design input - new name

  36. “The Agreement” • $10 million project over five years • Capture new data and validate old • State/Territory to contribute amount relative to specimens to be databased/validated • $4 million Commonwealth + $4 million State/Territory + $2 million private • Sharing data critical to cost (cf. $16 million)

  37. Who uses the AVH? • The participating herbaria get access to all the data at the highest precision. • Public access filter restricts access to work in progress, sensitive locality data, etc. • Access to conservation agencies, environmental decision makers • Research and education • Public general interest

  38. GREENING THE GRAINBELT Uses

  39. Uses

  40. ROTAP ferns and fern allies

  41. ROTAP ferns and fern allies

  42. Cyathea exilis

  43. Cyathea exilis Tectaria devexa

  44. When did the AVH happen? • Basically last year and this year • But we have been working towards it for over 13 years • And there have been the occasional dead ends and setbacks, waiting for technology, capacity, support, etc.

  45. Brief History of the AVH • 1995 - HISCOM recommends the AVH concept (a distributed database) to CHAH • 1997 - Canvassed at Systematics meeting • 1999 - Proof of concept with Acacia • 2000 - Government Minister shows interest • 2000 - Interest from industry/foundations • 2000/01 - Negotiating cost & lobbying

  46. Recent Activity • Major item at October 2001 CHAH meeting- Agreement on what information we provide to community - Priority groups and ‘Who does what?’ • Trust to oversee financial arrangements • Liaison and Advisory Committee • Funds identified in budgets • Herbaria recruit staff and start work

  47. hoW does the AVH work? • On a number of different levels • Politically • Administratively • Technically • Scientifically • Emotionally

  48. AVH General Architecture

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