Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Natural Heritage Trust (SCDNR NHT) Botany and Plant Conservation Program partnered with the University of South Carolina A.C. Moore Herbarium to supplement data standards for the SERNEC (Symbiota based SEINET portal) database, specifically for South Carolina (SC) herbarium specimen data. Herbarium data managers frequently receive questions about how to enter data from herbarium specimens that do not match any of the provided fields. This may occur because fields were written broadly to accommodate many different types of specimens. SCDNR NHT strives to come up with unambiguous data standards for SC herbarium specimens to facilitate concise data entry and provide a usable resource for all SC and interested herbaria . These data standards will be integrated into R scripts used to process data downloaded from SERNEC to assist with ‘rare’ and ‘species of conservation concern’ tracking. All SC herbaria and a few of our neighboring states’ herbaria were contacted to set up a virtual meeting to discuss data standards and provide feedback. After hearing from herbaria representatives, we compiled data standards into an indexed PDF with examples and made it available to all herbaria. Data processors will be following these data standards going forward.