The Herbarium of the University of Navarra will digitize its plant collection, consisting of nearly 100,000 specimens.

Ricardo Ibáñez, Mari Sánchez and María Imas, researchers responsible for the digitalization of the Herbarium. PHOTO: loaned

The University of Navarra will digitize the entire plant collection of its Herbarium, made up of some 100,000 specimens. "The goal is to make this information available to society and the entire academic community through the Internet," explains Ricardo Ibáñez, professor at School of Sciences and director of project.

During 2009, 17,000 specimens of the vascular plant collection of the PAMP Herbarium (acronym registered in the Index Herbariorum) were computerized. This information will be available from this month through GBIF(http://www.gbif.es/), an intergovernmental organization whose goal is to provide access -via Internet, freely and free of charge- to data of biodiversity from all over the world.

The digitization of the Herbarium is carried out by a team from the Botany section of department at Plant Biology, formed by Professor Ricardo Ibáñez and the technical assistants of research Mari Sánchez and María Imas. The work, subsidized by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, focuses on three aspects: review and fill in the original information on the labels of the database, update the nomenclature of the identified specimens and georeferencing the localities.



The PAMP Herbarium houses two main collections, one of bryophytes (non-vascular plants composed of mosses, liverworts and anthocerous groups) and the other of vascular or tracheophyte plants (with conducting vessels that branch into roots, stems and leaves). The collection of bryophytes reaches about 25,000 specimens, of which about 9,000 are already computerized. The vascular plant collection is close to 100,000 sheets, and 17,000 have been digitized to date. 

Most of the material deposited in the Herbarium comes from collections made by researchers at department Botany, often as a result of thesis and dissertations carried out in the Comunidad Foral. There are also duplicates donated by collectors and external institutions and material from exchange. Regarding the geographical origin of the computerized specimens, 96% have been collected in Spain and 62% come from Navarra.

The Herbarium is an institutional member of the association de Herbarios Ibero-Macaronesicos (AHIM). Its origin dates back to the arrival at the University of Full Professor Taurino Mariano Losa España in 1964, who began his own collections. A year later, Dr. María Luisa López arrived, who has maintained her contributions to the Herbarium uninterruptedly up to the present day. Other botanists such as José María Muñoz Medina and Bartolomé Casaseca, as well as various other centers, also supported the project in the early years, donating collections and sending duplicates.

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