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Many herbaria across North America have acquired specimens from the arctic ecozone, through field expeditions, collection exchanges, gifts, and as research vouchers. These collections underpin all knowledge on the diversity and distribution of the Arctic flora -- they form the primary scientific record on which the Arctic Flora of Canada and Alaska will be based. Morphological descriptions will be developed through study of herbarium specimens, and distribution maps will be based on species occurrences as documented by herbarium specimens Many herbaria have begun to digitize their collections data and post this information to the web. Immediate access to these data, when available, is often of great use; for example, allowing botanists to determine the locations of specimens of interest, to assess the number of Arctic specimens in a particular herbarium, and to make specific (vs. general) loan requests based on known specimens in a collection. Many herbaria have also begun posting specimen images, which sometimes are sufficient for accurate identification or other data validation without a physical loan. Listed below are North American herbaria whose collections are likely to possess large numbers of specimens from the flora region. Many of these herbaria are also members of the Canadensys Network, whose mission is to digitize and freely share the natural history specimen metadata from these institutions. Other consortia, most notably the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria, have members with significant Arctic holdings, some of these herbaria are also listed below. In addition to these herbaria, this Scratchpad also hosts the data for two unique Arctic flora collections: The Parks Canada Western Field Unit Herbarium, and the Hermann Simmmons collection from the University of Oslo [Check back soon for an update on the Simmons Collection]. |
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