The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Meredith Woodward will present Master’s research titled, The State of Herbaria in Tennessee on 02/28/2025 at 12:00pm in Holt Hall Room 112. Everyone is invited to attend.
Environmental Science
Chair: Joey Shaw
Co-Chair:
Abstract:
Thirteen of the total 14 herbaria within Tennessee were the focus of substantial efforts to digitize southeastern plant specimens. This produced ~894,000 digitized vascular plant specimens for utilization in research, reference, education, and efficient analysis of bias. Biases, when exposed, can be used for prescribing future work regarding deeper digitization or on-the-ground documentation. However, in order to confidently allocate resources for the most effective means of addressing biases, the level to which a collection has been completely digitized needs to be understood in order to identify the potential source of any bias observed. The herbaria within Tennessee were found to have high levels of complete digitization across certain fields of specimen data and nearly no information available in others. This report elucidates the holdings of the Tennessee herbaria, identifies biases within their data, and prescribes intentional future work by accounting for the current state of the collections.