| NSF Org: |
RISE Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 18, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 3, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 2026961 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Raleigh Martin
ramartin@nsf.gov (703)292-7199 RISE Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2020 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2025 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $1,199,960.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,199,960.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1000 E UNIVERSITY AVE LARAMIE WY US 82071-2000 (307)766-5320 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1000 E. University Avenue Laramie WY US 82071-2000 |
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Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | EarthCube |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): | |
| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Fossil plants provide the best record of how Earth?s environments have changed through time. However, plant fossils present unique challenges that previously made this record inaccessible for large scale studies of Earth History. Plant organs, like leaves, wood, fruits, seeds are rarely preserved attached to each other, and it can be difficult to associate different organs as part of the same plant and assign formal taxonomic names to the isolated organs. None of the major paleontological databases can accommodate the informal names that are commonly used for isolated organs, and the necessary tools to coordinate such fossil plant data across institutions, researchers, time periods, and geography do not exist. This project will create the integrative Paleobotany Database (PBOT), an online public database of fossil plant descriptions for both informally and formally-named fossils, work-bench software, and community discussion forums. PBOT will integrate with existing online database resources, including museum specimen and occurrence records, to enable research on past plant diversity and evolution at scales not previously possible. PBOT will advance NSF?s mission of transparency in science, by making paleobotanical data and the scientific process more open and accessible to a broad range of users. For example, the database will make fossil plant data available to the public and educators at all levels for use in hands-on educational activities and for citizen science initiatives. Furthermore, the online workbench will provide a standardized resource for fossil plant description and data entry that will benefit students and professionals, as well as fossil enthusiasts. Overall, the PBOT infrastructure and platform will revolutionize the way paleobotanical data is shared and used, allowing for a myriad of scientific and societal uses, and charting a sustainable, long-term digital future for paleobotanical data management and research.
Paleobotanical data is severely underrepresented in major publicly accessible databases, even though fossil plants represent the best record of ancient terrestrial environments. A major impediment to the inclusion of paleobotanical data in databases at meaningful levels of taxonomy is that plant parts are most often preserved separately, with varying potential for taxonomic resolution. Paleobotanists therefore commonly use morphologically-based, informal taxonomies (morphotypes) rather than traditional Linnaean classifications. The names given to a particular morphotype are inconsistent among research groups, and currently there is no data-management infrastructure that allows comparison and synonymizing of morphotypes among regions or time periods or with published formal taxonomies. As a result, a large proportion of the millions of fossil plant specimens housed in museums worldwide are, together with their spatio-temporal occurrence data, inaccessible for inclusion in studies of paleobiology, paleoclimatology, Earth system modeling, macroevolution, and macroecology. This project will provide a long-needed solution to these problems by extending the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) with a Paleobotany Portal (PBOT) web client and database for (1) creating novel, dynamic, community-sourced character schemas for morphotypic plant descriptions; (2) entering and browsing informal and formal taxonomies via morphological characters; (3) applying these formal and informal taxonomies to digitized fossil plant specimens in Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio); and (4) maintaining a community forum for expert commentary on PBOT contents. As a part of this project, the researchers will use PBOT to populate PBDB with paleobotanical leaf fossil datasets from the Cretaceous through Eocene and analyze diversity and climate variation across the warmest intervals of the past 100 million years. Overall, data made available by PBOT will enable synthetic analyses of paleoclimate and plant macro-ecology and -evolution that have not been possible to date.
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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