Harnessing the benefits of specimen digitisation
The world’s herbaria and fungaria hold the most complete, expertly
curated and important sources of information for plant and fungal life on
Earth. Yet, for much of their history, these data have remained accessible only
to physical visitors. Massive efforts are now underway to digitise these
collections, unlocking billions of data points through high-resolution imaging,
omics analyses and the generation of rich multimodal meta-data.
This three-day symposium accompanies the publication of a
cutting-edge report exploring the applications and implications of this digital
revolution. It brings together international experts to examine how these
emerging digital resources are being used to address pressing scientific,
environmental and societal questions.
Crucially, we will discuss how best to galvanise global support to
increase digitisation, particularly in biodiverse, low-income countries. These
discussions will be developed into an open access publication to drive future
action and policy.
Find out more details here.
