News Release
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October 13,
2005
Boise State Biologist Helps Lead Effort
To Recover Natural History Collections Lost To Katrina
Idaho may be thousands of miles removed from the ravages of Hurricane
Katrina, but a Boise State University botanist is at the forefront of a
campaign to provide assistance for the recovery and maintenance of natural
history collections lost or damaged by the disaster.
Jim Smith, a professor in Boise State’s Department of Biology and chair of
the publicity committee for the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, is
working with his colleagues from around the country to raise funds to help
recover and maintain botanical collections that may have been damaged by
hurricanes Katrina and Rita that swept through Texas and the Gulf Coast
earlier this fall.
The collections, housed in laboratories, universities, field stations and
other institutions, provide an irreplaceable record of plant, animal and
fungal species collected in the region over an extended time period, said
Smith, director of Boise State’s herbarium, a natural history collection
of plant species. They provide researchers with information about what
plants and animal species existed in areas that have since become
urbanized, about the effects of climate change, as part of investigations
to pinpoint the scene of a crime, and in many evolutionary,
pharmacological and ecological studies.
“These collections are intended to be a permanent record- permanent unless
disaster strikes,” Smith said. “As an example, the herbarium of the Gulf
Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, Miss., was flooded in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and many specimens may be damaged beyond
repair. The lab reports that most cabinets were knocked on their sides by
the storm surge that flooded the building and nearly all the specimens had
been in standing water for several days before waters receded.”
The American Society of Plant Taxonomists has created a committee to work
with experts on site in the hurricane-stricken Gulf Coast region to
identify which natural history collections have been damaged and to
disperse funds. According to Dick Jensen, president of ASPT and the lead
organizer of the emergency fund, the long-term goal of the project is to
provide support in similar circumstances that are certain to occur in the
future.
“These funds can be used whenever disaster strikes a collection and there
is insufficient time to worry whether there are funds to cover the costs
of salvaging these priceless collections,” said Jensen, a biology
professor at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind.
In places such as the Gulf Coast Research Lab, crews have worked to assess
the damage to the collections and move them to temporary locations.
However, the process of salvaging wet or moldy specimens and rebuilding
damaged buildings at a number of locations is still just getting under
way, according to a number of university reports.
While the recent hurricane disasters have focused attention on the Gulf
Coast region, other parts of the country are also vulnerable to similar
scenarios, Smith added. “We are not threatened by hurricanes here, but we
could still have fires or water damage from plumbing problems. Boise State
and Idaho need these collections for our own interpretation of natural
history,” he said.
Anyone wishing to make a donation to the ASPT Herbarium Emergency Fund
should send their contribution to the organization’s business office:
American Society of Plant Taxonomists, University of Wyoming, Department
of Botany 3165, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, Wyo. 82071. Online
donations can be made at https://www1.allenpress.com/cgi-bin/aspt-renewal.cgi.
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The long-term impacts of the losses of natural history collection in the
Gulf Coast area - such as museums of preserved plant, animal and fungal
specimens that document the biota of the Gulf Coast and adjacent regions -
may have far-reaching ramifications in New Orleans and other cities of the
Gulf states, according to Smith and other experts.
“For every Tyrannosaurus rex and saber-tooth tiger on exhibit at a museum,
there are thousands of specimens behind the scenes,” Smith said. “These
collections are often the result of hundreds of years of work by thousands
of different collectors. The collections are critical for present and
future scientific investigations and are a greater contribution to science
than most material that is seen by the public.”
Smith explained that specimens are gathered and maintained in such a way
that information on where the organism was growing or living, its
interactions with other organisms in that region and other general
information about that organism at the time of its collection are kept
with the specimen. As a result these data are invaluable for researchers
and others who may want to know what the plants and animals were where
today there is a 10-story parking garage.
“These specimens may provide critical information on species that are now
locally, regionally or perhaps globally endangered or extinct,” Smith
said. “In recent years these specimens have become the source of DNA as
researchers become more molecular in their studies of evolution and
ecology.”
Natural history collections sometimes provide information that was never
anticipated at their time of collection. Examples include:
• Mark Teece of the State University of New York at Syracuse has used
plant leaf samples from the Lewis and Clark Herbarium to study the climate
and atmosphere of western North America at the time the two explorers made
their famous journey 200 years ago. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and
their group gathered several hundred specimens in 1804-06, which are today
housed in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
• George Divoky of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of
Alaska
Fairbanks used specimens of Arctic seabirds called Alaskan guillemots,
taken at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and compared them with
similar data from present-day birds. The feather comparison gave
indications of long-term climate changes in the region.
Collections of plant specimens, such as the one at Boise State that Smith
oversees, are essential tools for environmental science research,
according to Lucinda McDade, chair of the ASPT herbarium relief committee
and a botanist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
“The collection data accompanying each specimen enables us to track and
understand the introduction and spread of exotic species,” McDade said.
“Exotic species such as cheat grass have altered the entire landscape of
the American West. Knowledge of collections of this species, including
specimens from the Gulf states, have helped researchers understand how and
when the cheat grass invasion occurred.”
Data from collections have been incorporated into geographic information
system databases and are used to construct vegetation maps of states.
Environmental consultants utilize the collections as a reference for
identifying plant species used to define a site as a wetland.
Other environmental-based research using plant specimen collections has
included documenting the stomatal density of leaves, according to Melanie
Devore, an ASPT member and a botanist at Georgia College and State
University in Milledgeville, Ga. Stomata are the pores in leaves that
permit carbon dioxide to enter the leaf and be used in photosynthesis. The
densities of stomata show some relationship with carbon dioxide levels in
the atmosphere. Using herbarium collections, researchers can document how
plants have responded to elevated carbon dioxide levels associated with
fossil fuel use.
Herbarium collections are also useful to physicians and the police, Devore
said. Doctors may use the collections to identify the plant ingested by a
child. Likewise, a detective can use the collections to identify plant
parts found on a Jane or John Doe to determine if the murder scene
coincides with the site at which a body was recovered.
The American Society of Plant Taxonomists promotes research and teaching
in the classification, organization, and evolutionary history of vascular
and nonvascular plants. Organized in 1935, the Society has a membership of
more than 1,300.
Smith emphasized that efforts such as the ones he is spearheading are
secondary to humanitarian relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
and its aftermath. “The primary concern in these situations has been, as
it should be, with the people whose lives are at risk and who need help
getting their lives back to normal,” he said. “We realize that our effort
must take a back seat to the more immediate needs of those whose lives
have been devastated by this catastrophe and ask that they be given first
priority.”
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Contact: Jim Smith, Department of Biology, (208) 426-3551,
jfsmith@boisestate.edu
Media Contact: Janelle Brown, Communications, (208) 426-1790,
jbrown2@boisestate.edu, or Bob
Evancho, Communications, (208) 426-1643,
bevancho@boisestate.edu
The Office of Communications and Marketing
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Boise State University
1910 University Drive -
Education Building, #726 -
Boise Idaho 83725-1030
208-426-1577
(fax)208-426-4001
email newservices@boisestate.edu
Last reviewed on Thursday, December 22, 2005