ABSTRACT

Urbanization represents an extreme form of ecosystem transformation, leading to changes that redefine our conception of nature. However, scientific understanding of our increasingly urban world is limited by the availability of historical data documenting these ecological changes. This project partners the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM) with the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis (MAM) Project, a Thematic Collections Network (TCN) involving 11 institutions in the urban corridor from New York City to Washington, D.C., to digitize herbarium specimens from the Mid-Atlantic states. Western Pennsylvania is widely recognized as an urbanized area that was transformed from an industrial powerhouse (and one of the most polluted metropolitan areas in the 19th and 20th centuries) to an emerging center for sustainability and technological innovation. This partnership will fill a "Rust Belt" data gap by including urban areas in Pennsylvania that have undergone remarkable environmental and ecological change over the past two centuries. CM specimens will enhance the MAM Project by adding nearly 190,000 herbarium specimens, increasing the total number of MAM specimens by more than 25%. In addition to making these valuable specimens more accessible through public databases, targeted activities will directly connect digitized data to scientists and the public, contributing to ongoing programs in invasive species management, education of nature in the city, and museum exhibition. Taken together, these activities will improve scientific and public understanding of urban environments, highlighting sustainability and the future of this increasingly common biome in the current era of global change.

This project connects an unrepresented, but important, Mid-Atlantic urban region to the MAM Project. Digitization of each CM specimen will result in a high-resolution image and georeferenced point, enabling biogeographic, floristic, and phenotypic analyses through space and time. Data capture, efficient workflow development, and data dissemination will follow best practices, utilizing the existing project infrastructure of the MAM project and iDigBio. Data on non-native species will be made available to PA iMapInvasives program to track the introduction and spread of harmful invasive plants in the region. Further, this project will integrate specimen images into museum exhibits, with the construction of a new exhibit highlighting specimen-based research, the importance of digitization, and the ecological and economic value of plants in cities. In collaboration with museum educators, specimen images will be used in the development of an online toolkit of free science activities for local school teachers that explore nature in urban settings. Weekly blogs will feature specimens of local interest, focusing on the urban plants of Pittsburgh. Collaborating with MAM partners, workshops will be held for local botanical clubs and citizen scientists in the Pittsburgh region to the assist in digitization, specifically joining the efforts of established projects focused on shifts in flowering times across the Eastern US and the development of a virtual flora of the Mid-Atlantic. Collectively, the project will provide research-ready data to enable a better understanding of human-mediated changes at multiple biological, geographic, and temporal scales, as well as predictions for the future ecology of urban areas. All data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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