Herbarium and Climate Change
Today, in The Sidewalk Herbarium, I was introduced to Herbarium and its importance. An herbarium is a collection of preserved plants that are pressed and observed and used for future scientific studies. I used to do bullet journals, and in some of the themes, I actually added pressed plants, often flowers. I never realized that pressed plants were more than just decoration and art. When I found out about herbariums, I became intrigued and decided to research more in-depth.
Each herbarium specimen is accompanied by a label that tells the botanical name, family, habit, and place & date of collection. It also includes the name of the person who collected the specimens. An herbarium is very important. It is a source of knowledge on thousands, possibly even millions of specimens. It is also used for historical taxonomical records, DNA databases, and climate change indications. When Alvaro Azcarraga talked about how herbariums were used for climate change indicators, I wanted to see how they were able to indicate.
Phenology, which is the timing of annual cycles, helps indicate plants' responses to climate change and allows predictions for future changes. Within the last decade, over 30 studies have used herbarium specimens to analyze the change in phenology. Most studies analyze the effect of temperature over a long period of time in relation to the characterize change in phenology.
Climate change results in major changes in phenology, while other plants have close to no effect. Plant specimens in herbaria have helped provide additional data for phenologyical responses to climate change. Herbariums are reliable, since many studies have shown that herbarium specimen data is comparable to findings of field studies. As modern technology continues to develop, herberia are being digitalized, allowing more data to become available for future studies. As climate change increases, the use of herbarium specimens will be sure to increase as well.
