Ornithology News & Updates

A fascinating new book chronicling transformation on the plains of Kansas and western Colorado uses repeat photography — contemporary re-creations of 1870s photos — to reveal startling changes to the landscape.

Over the past few decades, herbaria and museums worldwide have created digital data records documenting millions of specimens in their holdings. The benefits of digitizing the contents of natural history museums and research institutions flow to the public and researchers worldwide. Now, through a group of related grants from the National Science Foundation, researchers led by the KU Biodiversity Institute's A. Townsend Peterson, are systemically digitizing more than a million specimens of plants from across tropical Africa held at 20 institutions throughout the United States. The tropical African plant specimens — documenting some of the richest elements of biodiversity in the world — will be digitally imaged, while associated data are captured and data records are georeferenced.