California Floristics – data analysis progress of 2 million herbarium specimens

I could not find that the Consortium of California Herbaria website had done an overall assessment of data entry progress – so I compiled the statistics below.  As of the 18 October 2012 summary by institution for the 20 listed herbaria, 70.1% of the reported 2,215,256 California specimens have been databased.

This is a quite important and remarkable proportion.

Assessment of the overall pattern of endemism and endangerment in the California flora has before now been largely a personalized, experiential process.  Data crunching has played a minor role here and there in papers, yes.  But largely the classic papers and patterns are the product of botanists summarizing their field experience.  Miles driven.  Campfires lit.  Cans of beans consumed.

At this juncture, I suggest that a second aspect of herbarium specimen digitization is needed: analysis. We have 70% of the data.  Now we need to augment additional data capture with data rectification -cleaning up heteroduplicates, data entry errors, incomplete dates or incomplete collection numbers, inconsistencies in data entry between herbaria, incorrect counties etc.   Georeferencing is also well along. 

The CCH 20 institution summary statistics as of 18 October 2012 are:

Herbarium	CA entered	Total CA	CA to go	% entered
CAS/DS	151105	520000	368895	29.1
CDA	24117	30000	5883	80.4
CHSC	69658	73381	3723	94.9
CSUSB	2003	4800	2797	41.7
DAV	70824	150000	79176	47.2
HSC	68758	80000	11242	85.9
IRVC	5675	30100	24425	18.9
OBI	11628	56000	44372	20.8
PGM	7591	7600	9	99.9
RSA/POM	384941	425958	41017	90.4
SBBG	93822	120000	26178	78.2
SCFS	1000	3000	2000	33.3
SD	110851	111000	149	99.9
SDSU	16281	16281	0	100.0
SJSU	9556	10136	580	94.3
UC/JEPS	359000	360000	1000	99.7
UCR	134204	134500	296	99.8
UCSB	17905	65000	47095	27.5
UCSC	6187	9500	3313	65.1
YM	7878	8000	122	98.5
TOTAL	1552984	2215256	662272	70.1