Notícias
Live celebrates the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Reflora Virtual Herbarium, which has reached the milestone of 4 million digitized images
The Reflora Virtual Herbarium celebrated 10 years since its launch on September 30, and has reached the milestone of 4 million botanical images digitized and made available to scientists and the public. To celebrate, the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden Research Institute (JBRJ) and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) will be holding an online round table on October 11 at 2pm to discuss the advances that HV Reflora has made to the knowledge of Brazilian flora, its developments, challenges and a little of this success story. The live event will be broadcast on the Botanical Garden's YouTube channel.
A tool that has become indispensable for research and conservation actions on Brazilian flora, HV Reflora was born out of an initiative by CNPq and is coordinated by the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden. When it was launched in 2013, there were three research institutions involved: the Rio Botanical Garden itself, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London), and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris). Currently, there are 84 partners, including national and international institutions.
A new grant of R$1.5 million, made in May this year by CNPq, is another achievement to be celebrated. The funds will be used to digitize samples from the herbarium of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria, and will also make it possible to continue capturing images and data in Brazilian herbaria. Vienna has important collections of samples of Brazilian plants because, in the 19th century, naturalists from the so-called "Austrian mission" made expeditions to our country. They were part of the entourage of the future Empress Leopoldina, wife of Dom Pedro I, who came from Austria in 1817.
Physical herbaria are made up of plant samples collected by researchers on their field expeditions and prepared for storage and study, called exsiccates. Until the beginning of the 20th century, many foreign naturalists made collections in Brazil and took them to herbaria in other countries. Until 2013, research was slow and costly, as it largely depended on researchers visiting these foreign herbaria in person.
The Reflora Virtual Herbarium has revolutionized and profoundly impacted the scientific practice of Brazilian botany, allowing taxonomists to work in a similar way to what they already do in physical collections, by providing access to high-resolution images of exsiccates on an online platform. This way, queries, identifications, re-identifications and typifications of specimens can be made, as well as other functions.
The HV Reflora platform was developed by JBRJ in partnership with Coppe/UFRJ. Since 2014, with the support of the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBR), the National Forest Inventory (IFN) and the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Faperj), other European, North American and Brazilian herbaria have been included in the project, receiving equipment, training and fellows to digitize the exsiccates of Brazilian plants from their collections.
The program was supported by the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FNDCT), the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes), state research foundations, the Natura company, the Vale Institute and also the Newton Fund, from the UK government.
Service
Online round table: Reflora Virtual Herbarium - 10 years
October 11, 2023, at 2pm