Meeting minutes

[bob.c...@gmail.com]

Groupies:
Below are tentative minutes of Monday's meetings. Please read
through them and add anything that I overlooked; if there are
questions about my understanding of what happened, feel free to point
it out.
Also feel free to suggest a better way to revise the minutes if
this doesn't seem the best way to go (would posting the minutes on
Google doc work better?)
Once we've all had a week or so to look these over, I will draft
a separate document to summarize the node's activities, and I'll post
that here as well. Once everyone's happy with that statement, I would
send it out to other members or potential members of the node to keep
them up to date on what's going on and to recruit new members who
might not previously have been aware of our existence.

Bob


MEETING MINUTES

The Northeast node working group assembled June 2, 2008, at the
University of Massachusetts to continue discussions about getting
specimen data digitized so that it can be made available online to the
larger community of researchers. The main focus of the meeting was
adopting a formal structure and name for the organization.
Karen Searcy of the University of Massachusetts, who organized the
meeting, welcomed the group to the UMass campus, and those in
attendance introduced themselves (see list below).

James Macklin of Harvard led a brief discussion of the group’s prior
activities and of efforts to organize nodes elsewhere in the United
States, including TORCH (the Oklahoma-Texas consortium), SERNEC (the
Southeast node), and the California Consortium. Macklin and Mike
Donoghue of Yale also discussed funding opportunities for organizing
meetings as well as underwriting databasing activities, such as those
offered by the Mellon Foundation and the NSF’s Research Coordination
Network program. It was generally agreed that the Northeast network
could move itself forward a little more aggressively, establishing a
web presence and investigating funding opportunities. It was also
agreed that an organization structure would facilitate the node’s
efforts.

The group discussed various organizational structures that it could
adopt and agreed that for the time being we would create an interim
steering committee with an interim chairman. We discussed various
possibilities for the term of service of the chair and steering
committee members but left the matter unresolved for the present. It
was understood that, while the organizational structure is likely to
persist, the membership of the steering committee will change over
time and that more formal bylaws will be needed at some point.

We discussed the importance of making the steering committee
representative of the region’s herbaria by including members from
small as well as large institutions and including members from states
and provinces throughout the area to be served by the Northeast node,
which extends from New Jersey and Pennsylvania north through New
England to the eastern provinces of Canada. It was agreed that
setting a date and location for the next node meeting ASAP was
essential to ensuring maximum regional participation at the next
meeting.

Janet Sullivan and Chris Neefus, two representatives from the
University of New Hampshire, agreed to organize the next annual
meeting of the Northeast node on their campus in the spring or early
summer of 2009. This meeting will be two days in length. The group
will seek external funding to support the meeting. A meeting of the
steering committee was scheduled tentatively for November and is
possibly to be held at Yale University.

Membership in the steering committee will include individuals focusing
on particular tasks as well as those with special expertise. The
initial members of the committee and the areas on which they will work
are: Patrick Sweeney, Yale, chairman; Jennifer Doubt of the Canadian
Museum of Nature, Canadian membership; Alina Freire-Fierro of
Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural History, membership; Kathie Hodge of
Cornell, web design; James Macklin, Harvard, bioinformatics and
national efforts; Chris Neefus and Janet Sullivan, UNH, conveners for
the next annual meeting; Karen Searcy, UMass, membership; Bob Capers,
University of Connecticut, recording secretary.

There was much discussion about the importance of smaller herbaria
because they hold specimens that are not duplicated elsewhere and may
have more recent collections than larger herbaria. These herbaria also
have fewer resources in many cases and may not be able to database,
image or place data online without support from outside organizations.
In the first meeting of the node in 2004 it was agreed that it would
be useful to demonstrate the value of assembling the collective
information represented by our separate herbaria, and members had
agreed to collect information on specimens of Celastrus scandens, C.
orbiculatus and Epipactis helleborine. Little resulted from this
initial effort, so members of the current meeting agreed to revive
it. Macklin offered to approach Dave Bufford about obtaining the data
that were generated during the first effort, and participants who did
not contribute to the initial effort agreed to provide their data.

The group discussed membership in the node, and it was suggested that
all officially recognized herbaria would be potential members but that
small teaching collections also should be included. However, exact
criteria for membership were not established.

Following lunch, the group toured the UMass greenhouses, paying
particular attention to specimens of Amborella and Welwitschia, and
the UMass herbarium.

After the tours, Macklin discussed various efforts taking place at the
national level. It was agreed that Sweeney and/or Sullivan would
attend the WDC012 meetings and workshops; the WDC012 project is
intended to coordinate and assist in the creation of regional herbaria
networks.

During the afternoon, the group discussed possible names for the node,
the attendant acronyms and the writing of a mission statement and
goals. Suggested names (and acronyms) included: Northeastern Herbarium
Network (NHN, NEHN), Northeastern Network of Herbaria (NNH, NNOH),
Northeastern Consortium of Herbaria (NCH, NECH, NCOH, NECOH),
Northeastern Herbarium Consortium (NHC, NEHC), Northeastern North
American Herbarium Consortium (NNAHC, NENAHC), Northeastern North
American Consortium of Herbaria (NNACH, NENACH), Northeastern America
Consortium of Herbaria (NACH, NEACH), Consortium of Eastern North
American Herbaria (CENAH, COENAH), Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria
(CONH, CONEH), Eastern North American Consortium of Herbaria (ENACH,
ENACOH). Much discussion ensued on the respective strengths of
“consortium” vs. “network” and on the need to have a name that would
be found inclusive by herbaria in eastern Canada. Sweeney suggested
that a Google group be created and that further discussion on the best
name be continued there. He also read the mission statement and goals
adopted by other nodes and suggested the wording of a possible mission
statement for the Northeast network. This was much discussed and
refined by members of the group. One version of the mission statement
follows: “The Northeast Herbarium Consortium [or some other name]
serves as a communication and organizational structure that unites
herbaria in northeastern North America with the primary goal of
providing online access to specimen data housed in member
institutions, with an emphasis on regional collections.” Group members
agreed to continue discussing the mission statement and goals via the
Google group and to reach a consensus within the next couple of weeks.

Later in the afternoon, Macklin demonstrated the Specify Workbench
program, which works on data output from a Specify database or
generated elsewhere and being imported to the Specify database. The
workbench offers data-organizing, mapping and image-display
capabilities.

The steering committee working groups agreed to work towards the
following immediate goals:

Membership Group – Macklin has communicated with Pat Holmgren and
obtained an updated list of herbaria in the Northeast. 1) The group
will get this list from Macklin and work on verifying and updating
it. Active recruitment of herbaria not on the list will be pursued
later, after criteria for membership are established.

Meeting Group – 1) set date for meeting, 2) at the Botany meetings,
talk with representatives of potential funding sources about obtaining
money for the spring/summer meeting at UNH. Macklin and Sweeney will
assist Sullivan in this effort.

Web Group – 1) build a site ASAP. Sweeney will work closely with
Kathie Hodge to create a draft version of the site for members to
evaluate.

Bioinformatics Group – 1) assist in reviving the pilot project (the
Celastrus & Epipactis effort), 2) assist member institutions in
preparing data to be served to broader community, 3) possibly set up
data server.

Those attending the meeting were:

Steve Brewer, UMass
Robert Capers, UConn
Michael Donoghue, Yale
George Drake, UMass
Jennifer Doubt, Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa
Julie Dragon, University of Vermont and McGill University
Alina Friere-Fierro, Academy of Natural History, Philadelphia
Paul Harwood, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Kathie T. Hodge, Cornell
Chris Hoogendyk, UMass
Roberta Lombardi, UMass
James Macklin, Harvard
Chris Neefus, UNH
Pam Polloni, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole
Karen Searcy, UMass
Janet Sullivan, UNH
Patrick Sweeney, Yale

[Pam]

Bob, Thanks for the comprehensive minutes. Please list my affiliation
as MBLWHOI Library. We could use the Index Herbariorum codes. Ours
is SPWH. Thanks.
Pam Polloni

On Jun 5, 10:56 am, "robert.cap...@uconn.edu" <bob.cap...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Janet]

Attached are the meeting minutes Garrett Crow passed along to me from
the first meeting of this group, at Harvard in 2004. I share in case
there's anything we can use, though obviously a lot has changed!

March 6th, 2004 Meeting

Mission: Coordinate institutions to allow transparent queries across
distributed databases, providing broad access to geographic, specimen
and authority data applicable to conservation, climate change, land
use, invasive species, species ranges, biodiversity hot spots, and
evolutionary studies. Advance the study of the flora of New England,
an area with a rich history of botanical research.

Organisms: Vascular plants

Circumscription: 6 New England states

Rational for NEBIS (in no particular order):
• Documenting important historical collections.
• The Ramsar Convention identified south Connecticut River as a
wetland of international significance.
• Existing LTER, NEON sites.
• Assessing invasive and naturalized [cultivated] species: New England
is an ideal laboratory for monitoring invasive species and changes in
land use.
• Integration with Natural Heritage data sets.
• Ability to provide provisional floras for local, regional areas of
concern (e.g., Silvio Conte).
• Providing fine scale distribution maps for the Flora of New England
project.
• Analyzing collection density to provide estimates of collection
bias.
• Updating determinations on specimens.
• Providing information on species extirpation.
• Providing a basis for analyzing global climate change.
• Establishing a digital image bank – and digital image recognition.
• Cross-connecting to comparable databases of other organisms and
other types of organismic databases.
• Documenting phenology
• Assessing bioindicators and pathology.
• Educational outreach.
Demonstration project
• Wetlands – “Amazon basin of aquatic diversity” – Garret
o Historical distribution and extent of wetlands
o Subset of wetland proxies
o Taxonomic validation
o NEON funding for ocean/land interface
o Tracing disappearance of wetland habitats
o Climate change effects
o Obligate category (500 genera in US have at least one species in
category)
• Trees
o Fagaceae
o Change over time issue
• Non-invasive congeners of invasives
• Taxonomic scope
o Sedges (difficult taxa to recognize – bad for us, but of
conservation interest)
o Utricularia
o Monocots (not grasses)
o Orchidaceae (rare endanged, charismatic, )
o Ferns
o Cruciferae (new taxa showing up, and increasing; Arabidopsis would
insure funding)
o Aceraceae (orginal range of sugar maple?)
o Polygonaceae (weedy, aquatics, habitat variablility, some rare, some
common, taxonomic questions, SangTae
o Compositae (wetland spp., invasives, rare & endangered, introduced,
wide var. of habitats, bigger version of Polygonaceae; alpine taxa
might disapear with climate change)
o Fagaceae (not much change over 200 years, other discplines
interested in butternuts, hickories, )
o Conifers (J. commnis disappearing?, forest re-establishment, too
small)
o Ferns (expertise available, was previous work, but now we can still
improve on it, ferms might show underlying geology, localized pops of
hybrids, endemism)
o
• Fied study/training component
o Eval of recent collections – or lack of –
o training component based on augmenting collections where data shows
taxa are poorly collected in recent times.
Timeframe – BRC deadline 3rd week in July – BS&I – cross reviewed
8 collaborators on Collaborative research grant (Maine, NH, VT, Conn,
YU, HUH, Brown, MASS)
Need for calculations on No. of specimens in collections
Budget
Ave. of $40k per institution for databasing?
$40K for equipment and support
Post-doc for bells and whistles (predictive mapping, modeling?)

Proposal needs
What problems can you assess and how can these be assessed better
because we are providing this data.
e.g., distribtion changes over time
predictions affected by number of specimens available to the analysis
-- data from one or two institutions vs. 7-8.
Historical component – slice over time changes predictive
distributions (Epipactis)

Clades with species in categories
Upland
Wetland
Agricultural
Ubiquitous – Polygonum
Data records from each partner
*Epipactis (10 minutes for barcodes, 3 min. per specimen x 73
specimens for Dave B.)
*Maianthemum stellatum
Pletanthera
Abutilon
Polygonum
Persicaria
*Celatrus scandens (disappearing?)
*Celatrus orbiculatus (from Les)
Arctostaphylus uva-ursi
Pedicullaris canadensis
Lonicera
Counts needed for
Orchidaceae
Asteraceae
Polygonaceae
Fagaceae
Cruciferae
Juglandaceae

Distribution map
DiGIR demo


Submission to Biological Research Collections (BRC) and/or Biological
Species Inventories (BSI) – July 2004

Preliminary tasks:
• Determine duplicates in one group (e.g., Cypripedium) across all NE
Herbaria.
• Illustrate how combined data sets are of much greater value than
individually based ones to evaluate predictive species distributions
(i.e., is it enough just to go to Harvard?): examples possibly using
Phragmites, Celastrus, Elaeagnus, Cypripedium, Robinia, Polygonum,
Epipactus, Catalpa, Lythrum, Lonicera?
• Cost-benefit analysis, camera vs. scanner.
• Web presence with data on pilot data set.
• Formulate a questionnaire for all included Herbaria
• Determine IT expertise at each institution.
• Determine time frame – 5 years?
• Determine name: NEBIS (New England Botanical Information Sysyem),
FINE (Floristic Informatics of NE), PINE (Plant Informatics of NE).
• Determine data capture process (e.g., typed or via imaging).

[AFF]

Hi Bob,

I think that Julie was also interested in helping with the membership
of the northernmost states and the Canadian side east of Quebec.

Cheers!

Alina.

[bob.c...@gmail.com]

Pam, I've corrected your affiliation; thanks for pointing out the
incompleteness.
And thanks to Alina for mentioning that Julie had volunteered for the
steering as well. I checked with her and have made the necessary
correction in the meeting minutes, but I won't post them again unless
someone wants to see them.
Thanks, Janet, for the 2004 minutes; I've made a copy of them, too,
for the archives.
Bob