Digitizing the Santa Monica Mountains Herbarium, a Botanical Time Machine

Plant specimens from the past tell today's scientists about earlier environments. NPS / Michael Ready.

Botanists have been collecting and pressing wild plants for nearly 200 years, and institutions around the world hold vast herbarium collections — often more valuable now than when they were gathered. Old specimens show which species grew where, what their genetic makeup was at the time, and even what the climate was like. For a botanist, a herbarium is the closest thing to a time machine.

Hard to protect

Caring for these collections is complex and expensive. The pressed plants need climate-controlled rooms to keep from breaking down, and insects and moisture must be kept out. In Southern California there is another danger: wildfire. The 2018 Woolsey Fire burned nearly 100,000 acres, including more than 21,000 acres managed by the National Park Service, badly damaging native ecosystems and buildings in the Santa Monica Mountains — among them a structure that held many historic artifacts.

A digital backup

Because specimens are so valuable and so costly to protect, more institutions are digitizing their collections. At Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service staff and partners are using high-resolution camera equipment bought by the Southern California Research Learning Center to photograph every plant specimen in the park's collection, and every new one that arrives. The images go to the California Consortium of Herbaria, where researchers anywhere can study them now and in the future.

The physical specimens still hold things photographs can't capture, such as genetic material. But if disaster ever damages the herbarium, the digital record will be safe.

About the Research Learning Center

The Southern California Research Learning Center is one of 18 such centers in the national park system. They work to increase scientific activity in parks, share research that supports stewardship, and make science part of the visitor experience — here for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Channel Islands National Park and Cabrillo National Monument.

Sources

• National Park Service, Southern California Research Learning Center: "Digitization Helps Protect Botanists' Best Time Machine in the Santa Monica Mountains."