Abstract Detail

Biodiversity Informatics & Herbarium Digitization

Onuminya, Temitope [1], Ogundipe, Oluwatoyin [2], Igbari, Dolapo [2], Kemabonta, Kehinde [3].

Digitization of the Lagos University Herbarium - A complimentary conservation approach.

Established 1971, the University of Lagos herbarium (LUH) is one of the oldest institutional herbaria in Nigeria, located in the Department of Botany, University of Lagos. The herbarium provides services to students, researchers, scientist, and conservationists within Lagos and the country at large. It houses approximately 20,000 plant collections 70% of which are vascular plants. However, none of these are visible online or represented in GBIF record as specimen data are either uncatalogued or in form of hand written notes in registers. While duplicates from its collections have been shared to other herbaria globally, the herbarium needs to digitize its collections to expand its visibility and reach. Therefore, this project seeks to digitize and publish information from preserved vascular plant collections as well as associated metadata and images at LUH to ensure access for conservation assessments, policy making and stakeholder use. The project team is partnering with GBIF participant - Department of Zoology for data entry, management, and cleaning training, with the goal of contributing datasets of at least 10,000 specimen records. Information from vouchers were prepared in Darwin Core format using Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet and data cleaning was done using Open Refine. Each occurrence data includes geographic coordinates and digital image of specimen and this was published through the GBIF Integrated Publishing Tool (IPT). Thus far, a total of 4,000 occurrence data and 1,000 checklist data have been mobilized and published through the GBIF portal. An electronic key is being developed for identification of the samples using LUCID 4.0 license key and made available online. Stakeholders’ engagement meeting involving data holders within Lagos state, students, policy makers and researchers was held for project sensitization and to get their buy-in. As a result of the engagement meeting, the Lagos state Ministry of the Environment and Water resources partnered with the project team to train its staff in Digitization of Biodiversity data. It is hoped that this will increase capacity for specimen data mobilization and use in policy making for the state. Meetings of partners were held every two months to monitor progress of the project usually through WhatsApp or Zoom. It is expected that access to published data on the GBIF portal will foster the development of management interventions and contribute to developing national conservation priorities. This project is funded by the European Union through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility – Biodiversity Informatics for Development (GBIF-BID) programme Ref: BID-AF2020-009-INS.

1 - Universtiy Of Lagos, Department Of Botany, Akoka Yaba, Yaba, Lagos, 23401, Nigeria
2 - University of Lagos, Department of Botany, Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Akoka, Lagos, 23401, Nigeria
3 - University of Lagos, TETFUND Center of Excellence for Biodiversity Conservation and Ecosystem Management , Faculty of Science, Akoka, Lagos, 23401, Nigeria

Keywords:
Biodiversity
Herbarium Digitization
LUH
Bioconservation
GBIF-BID.

Presentation Type: Poster
Number: PBI003
Abstract ID:285
Candidate for Awards:None