Join Bell Museum curator George Weiblen to build a biodiversity atlas by digitizing the natural history collections that include over 1 million specimens of plants, animals, and fungi. Most information about these specimens, including when and where where they were collected, is hand-written on labels that require transcription. By participating in Mapping Change (http://z.umn.edu/mappingchange), you’re making 125 years of baseline data publicly available online. The resulting Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas (http://bellatlas.umn.edu) is free to the public as well as researchers, land managers, and conservation planners. The more complete the Atlas, the better we are able to measure, understand, and plan for changes to climate and biodiversity.
This workshop provides instruction on how to participate and how to use the Atlas to get maps, checklists, and specimen images. A behind-the-scenes tour of collections is also provided.
Following completion of this workshop, you will be able to use the Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas and transcribe Bell Museum specimens from home!