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" Contributions to the flora of Colorado "
Marika Laurel Majack
Bruederle, Leo P.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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803265
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| Doc. No
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TL48048
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| Call number
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1642021980; 1571286
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| Main Entry
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Alsumaiti, Tareefa Saad Sultan
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| Title & Author
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Contributions to the flora of Colorado\ Marika Laurel MajackBruederle, Leo P.
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| College
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University of Colorado at Denver
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| Date
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2014
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| Degree
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M.S.
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| field of study
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Biology
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2014
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| Page No
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138
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| Note
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Committee members: Hartley, Laurel M.; Islam, Melissa B.
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Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-41199-7
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| Abstract
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With increasing population and urbanization there is a pressing need to catalog biodiversity and understand the impacts of urban expansion on native ecosystems. Habitat degradation, fragmentation, and loss contribute to the extirpation of native plants, while facilitating the spread and establishment of introduced species. Floristic inventories are important tools used to document biodiversity, increase our understanding of species distributions, and inform management decisions. Traditionally, these inventories have been compiled by individuals conducting extensive fieldwork collecting vouchers over a discrete and usually brief period of time, typically not involving extensive herbarium study. Museum (herbarium) collections vouchering plant occurrences provide invaluable resources for many types of research, even more so with the recent focus on digitization of herbarium accessions. Virtual access to these collections has sparked the use of novel research methods, techniques and approaches, advancing research in many fields and adding richness to phytogeographic studies. However, the use of these new technologies does not come without risks. Here, I demonstrate the use of web-based herbarium databases for two floristic products traditionally created from a combination of fieldwork and study of physical specimens in herbaria: a checklist of vascular plant species occurring outside of cultivation in the City and County of Denver, Colorado and updates to the distribution of the pondweed family (Potamogetonaceae) in Colorado. To demonstrate a novel method of documenting a flora by rigorously mining web-based herbarium databases, a flora of Denver was compiled using existing vouchers from 20 herbaria. After multiple queries, much manual revision, and supplementation from fieldwork, a total of 758 species collected between 1861 and 2013 were documented for the county; these represent 410 genera and 101 families. Web-based herbarium databases were also used to guide work further documenting pondweeds in Colorado by identifying gaps in previous collecting efforts. Subsequent fieldwork resulted in 62 new and noteworthy collections of pondweeds in Colorado, including a species new to the state and 34 new county records. These case studies demonstrate the utility of web-based herbaria in floristics while highlighting the limitations of these databases, which can potentially lead to misleading data. 
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| Subject
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American studies; Plant sciences
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| Descriptor
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Social sciences;Biological sciences;Aquatic plants;Colorado;Denver;Potamogeton;Stuckenia
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Bruederle, Leo P.
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BiologyUniversity of Colorado at Denver
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