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Botanic gardens should lead the way to create a "Garden Earth" in the Anthropocene.

ABSTRACT: The strength and expertise that botanic gardens bring to conservation are based on their detailed knowledge and understanding of the care, management, and biology of a diversity of plant species. This emphasis on the organism has led to many ex-situ and in-situ conservation programs aimed at protecting endangered species, restoring threatened populations, and establishing living plant and seed collections of endangered species. In China, the scale and pace of change in land and resource use, often leading to environmental degradation, has created a strong emphasis on improving environmental conditions. If done properly, being "green" can be a surprisingly complex issue, because it should encompass and exploit the whole of plant diversity and function. Unfortunately, 'green' often includes a small portion of this whole. Earth's rich plant diversity presents considerable opportunity but requires expertise and knowledge for stable and beneficial management. With the dawning of the Anthropocene, we should strive to live on a "Garden Earth", where we design and manage our environments, both built and natural, to create a healthy, beneficial living landscape for people and other organisms. The staff of botanic gardens worldwide and the living collections they maintain embody the best examples of sustainable, beautiful, and beneficial environments that thrive on plant diversity. This expertise should be a fundamental resource for agencies in all sectors responsible for managing and designing "green" infrastructure. Botanic gardens should actively engage and contribute to these opportunities, from large public infrastructure projects to small private conservation efforts. Here, we discuss several ongoing conservation efforts, primarily in China, and attempt to identify areas where botanic gardens could make a significant and meaningful difference.

SUBMITTER: Cannon CH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6112317 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Botanic gardens should lead the way to create a "Garden Earth" in the Anthropocene.

Cannon Charles H CH Kua Chai-Shian CS

Plant diversity 20171124 6

The strength and expertise that botanic gardens bring to conservation are based on their detailed knowledge and understanding of the care, management, and biology of a diversity of plant species. This emphasis on the organism has led to many <i>ex-situ</i> and <i>in-situ</i> conservation programs aimed at protecting endangered species, restoring threatened populations, and establishing living plant and seed collections of endangered species. In China, the scale and pace of change in land and res ...[more]

PMID: 30159526

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Project description:BackgroundThe current data paper aims to interlink the African plant collections of the Meise Botanic Garden Herbarium (BR) and the Royal Museum for Central Africa Xylarium (Tw). Complementing both collections strengthens the reference value of each institutional collection, as more complete metadata are made available and it enables increased quality control for the identification of wood specimens. Furthermore, the renewed connection enables the linking of available wood trait data with data on phenology, leaf morphology or even molecular information for many tree species, allowing assessments of performance of individual trees. In addition to studies at the interspecific level, comparisons at the intraspecific level become possible, which could lead to important new insights into resilience to and impact of global change, as well as biodiversity conservation or forest management of Central African forest ecosystems.New informationBy interlinking the Tervuren Xylarium Wood database with the recently digitised herbarium of Meise Botanic Garden, we were able to establish a link between 6,621 xylarium and 9,641 herbarium records for 6,953 plant specimens. Both institutional databases were complemented with reliable specimen metadata. The Tervuren xylarium now profits from taxonomic revisions made by botanists at Meise Botanic Garden and a list of phenotypical features for woody African species can be extended with wood anatomical descriptors. New metadata from the Tw xylarium records were used to add the country of collection to 50 linked BR herbarium specimens for which this information was missing. Furthermore, metadata available from the labels on digitised BR herbarium specimens was used to update Tw xylarium records with the date of collection (817 records), collection locality (698 records), coordinates (482 records) and altitude (817 records). In conclusion, we created a reference database with reliable botanic identities which can be used in a range of studies, such as modelling analyses, community assessments or trait analyses, all framed in a spatiotemporal context. Furthermore, the linked collections hold historical reference data and specimens that can be studied in the context of global changes.

Dataset Information

Botanic gardens should lead the way to create a "Garden Earth" in the Anthropocene.

Publications

Botanic gardens should lead the way to create a "Garden Earth" in the Anthropocene.

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