[BSW] Event tomorrow + Next BSW meeting + More on Norton Brown Herbarium

[Kathy Bilton]

The Four Mile Run Conservatory Foundation invites you to explore nature,
culture, and history while improving Four Mile Run Park:

Thursday, October 27, 2016 @ 7pm: Learn how our forest has changed in the
last two centuries from historic maps and aerial photography, and its
relevance to environmental and human health.

Charles Houston Recreation Center
901 Wythe St.,Alexandria, VA 22314, 703.746.5552

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Next meeting: Tuesday, November 1st, 7 P.M.
Speaker: Aleks Radosavljevic
Visiting Scientist at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian 
Institution

Topic: Next Generation and Niche Modeling
Flier for posting: http://botsoc.org/nov16.pdf

Location: VZ Conference Room (WG 33)
Ground Floor of the West Wing, National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution, 10th St. and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, 
DC.

Please email Rob Soreng at the address sorengr at si.edu to arrange for a 
pass to get to the meeting room.

Pre-meeting dinner: 5:30 P.M. at the Elephant & Castle Pub and Restaurant, 
1201 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington. Phone 202-347-7707. The 
restaurant is diagonally across from the Old Post Office Pavilion at 12th 
and Pennsylvania, a few blocks from the Museum, with Federal Triangle the 
nearest Metro station, and Metro Center also nearby.

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Sylvan Kaufman has written a couple paragraphs that can be used in a 
letter of support and has asked anyone who wishes to use them to feel free 
to modify these as you see fit.

Ongoing herbarium work is essential to our understanding of the natural 
world, especially in these days of rapid change. The Norton Brown 
Herbarium was started to support the Maryland Agricultural Experiment 
Station in 1901 and now has a collection of more than 87,000 specimens 
with a focus on the flora of Maryland and mid-Atlantic, several plant 
families, and several special collections including those of the 
University’s College Park Arboretum and Botanic Gardens.  The herbarium 
serves as a repository for state endangered and rare plant collections and 
serves to document changes in plant distributions across the state.  It is 
used by state agencies including the Department of Natural Resources and 
Department of Agriculture as well as by researchers from around the world. 
Students use the herbarium to learn about plant taxonomy and to conduct 
research projects.  Herbarium specimens can be used to study everything 
from plant genetics, crop diseases, and medical uses to climate change.

For this sort of research to continue, it is vital that the University 
maintain support for the Norton Brown Herbarium.  It should be considered 
a valuable asset to the University in attracting world class researchers 
and funding, but instead it seems to be viewed as a financial burden. The 
Herbarium needs to be able to maintain and update its collections and make 
that information available to researchers and to the public.  It is an 
irreplaceable resource.

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In addition:

From: Bert Pittman <PittmanB at dnr.sc.gov>
To: "native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org"
     <native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org>
Subject: Re: [PCA] Norton Brown Herbarium may close

Although a little dated the findings published by a committee chaired by 
Peter Raven under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences are 
still relevant and well-written explaining the critical importance of 
systematic collections to basic science and conservation of biodiversity. 

  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK236473/