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University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

The state of herbaria in Tennessee

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The herbaria of Tennessee were the focus of substantial efforts to digitize southeastern plant specimens in the United States between 2014-2019. Because of that work, 13 of the 14 herbaria were digitized to varying degrees, producing approximately 894,000 digital vascular plant records. For the first time, the content of these collections could be elucidated and analyzed for bias. Defining their content demonstrates their disposition as a resource for Southeastern botany, and understanding biases can aid in intentionally allocating resources for future work regarding deeper digitization or on-the-ground documentation. However, in order to confidently prescribe work aimed at addressing bias, the level of complete digitization needs to be understood in order to recognize potential sources of any observed bias. This work elucidates the holdings of the Tennessee herbaria, identifies biases within the data, and prescribes intentional future work by accounting for the current state of the collections.

Degree

thesis:*
Grantor dc:publisher
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Year dc:date.available
2026

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Woodward, Meredith
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Shaw, Joey
  • Budke, Jessica; Craddock, J. Hill; Gaudin, Timothy J.; Krosnick, Shawn
  • College of Arts and Sciences

Subjects

dc:subject × 3

Rights

dc:rights
Language dc:language
English, eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/990
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-2182

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Tennessee - Chattanooga
Base URL
scholar.utc.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Woodward, Meredith. The state of herbaria in Tennessee. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 2026. https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/990