A new high-resolution camera at the CSIRO is set to photograph a million specimens of plants in nine months, while researchers study how the natural world is changing.
The plant objects, many collected a century ago, are stored in the Australian National Herbarium in Canberra, but according to the leader of the CSIRO group for digitization, Pete Thrall, it would take about eight years to digitize all specimens using a normal camera.
Eucalyptus pyriformis in the Australian National Herbarium of Canberra. (Provided by: CSIRO)
Instead, a new 100-megapixel camera, connected to a conveyor belt, will help researchers take up to 5,000 photos a day.
After a few months, the images will form a digital collection, which can be examined to assess changes in the natural world over time.
“Digitizing the herbarium is a big leap forward for sharing specimens for research,” Thrall said.
“As a result, we will be able to provide information quickly for projects such as forest fire recovery and biosecurity.
“Creating a digitized replica also provides security for irreplaceable physical specimens of the herbarium.”
More detail than it seems
Researchers hope that digitization will help them better understand how plants respond to climate change. (ABC News: Patrick Bell)
Postdoctoral researcher Dr Abdelwahed Khamis said the higher quality image could also reveal more features of the plants than when using a normal or plain sight camera.
“The leaves, the fruits, the stems … we can do a reliable detection of objects from the digital replica,” he said.
But he said the biggest advantage of digitizing plant specimens was that the collection would be available to other researchers to examine how plants responded to changes in the natural environment, such as those caused by climate change and extreme weather events.
“For example, determining how the reproductive structure of flowers is changing over time,” Dr. Khamis said.
“This is like the base task or the base assignment from which experts can move forward.”
Thrall said there had already been interest from investigators in examining the long-term effects of the black summer forest fires.
“Knowing what species there are, how rare they are … that kind of information we can get out of collections can help us do that kind of assessment,” he said.
Posted 9 hours, 9 hours ago, Friday, June 24, 2022 at 7:23 AM, updated 9 hours ago, 9 hours ago, Friday, June 24, 2022 at 7:23 AM