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Collection Profile for:
University of Alaska Museum Herbarium - Cryptogams (UAM-ALA)

The Herbarium (ALA) at the University of Alaska Museum is the major regional herbarium in Alaska and part of a network of similar collections with an interest in the origin and evolution of the circumpolar flora. ALA contains more than 260,000 specimens of vascular and non-vascular plants. Data for the Vascular Plant and Cryptogam collections are managed separately in Arctos. Most lichen collections in the ALA date from the early post WWII period, after the Alcan (now Alaska Highway) was completed, including specimens from John Thomson’s first of two Alaska expeditions in 1958 on the Arctic Slope as well as his 1967 expedition along the Alaska Highway. The contributions of three other people, H. Persson and W. C. Steere (bryophytes) and H. Krog (lichens), further strengthened the foundation for ALA’s cryptogamic collections. Barbara Murray’s collecting started in the 1970s just after the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay on the arctic coast of Alaska. Use of helicopters became frequent and as a result Murray has collected large number of specimens at over 250 Alaskan localities. The ALA cryptogamic collection has recently been supported by two NSF grants (NSF- 1023407: Toward Documenting Biodiversity Change in Arctic Lichens: Databasing the Principal Collections, Establishing a Baseline, and Developing a Virtual Flora (with University of Wisconsin) and NSF NSF-1115056: TCN Collaborative Research: North American Lichens and Bryophytes: Sensitive Indicators of Environmental Quality and Change) to help with digitization of specimen data and taking care of large backlogs of specimens. The majority of the cryptogam collections are from Alaska, while numerous collections are also from Russia, Fennoscandia, Canada and the lower 48 United States.

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Cite this collection:
University of Alaska Museum Herbarium - Cryptogams. Occurrence dataset (ID: 9469f045-5d9f-4e3d-a3d0-596ed6fa5ed8) accessed via the New Brunswick Museum Collections Portal, biodiverse-nb.ca/portal, 2024-12-03).

Collection Statistics

  • 111 specimen records
  • 5 (5%) georeferenced
  • 95 (86%) with images (191 total images)
  • 101 (91%) identified to species
  • 33 families
  • 47 genera
  • 72 species
  • 72 total taxa (including subsp. and var.)

Extra Statistics

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Collection Type: Preserved Specimens
Management: Data snapshot of local collection database
Last Update: 4 December 2023
Digital Metadata: EML File
IPT / DwC-A Source: UAMALA-DwC-import-2023
Usage Rights:
Rights Holder: University of Alaska Museum of the North
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