PROJECTS
DEEP SOUTH PLANT SPECIMEN IMAGING PROJECT (DSPSIP):
The Deep South Plant Specimen Imaging Project (DSPSIP) is funded by a two-year, $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Troy University and its current project partners – Florida State University, Auburn University, the University of South Alabama and the University of Southern Mississippi -- will share the NSF funding in a collaborative effort to bring online a vast quantity of botanical information to aid researchers. The project will create high-resolution digital images of 100,000 plant specimens from across the East Gulf Coastal Plain, then make them available to scientists and students via the World Wide Web.
Of the 100,000 plant specimens for which high-resolution digital images will be created, 20,000 will be from the TROY Herbarium. To ensure the broad distribution of the images, DSPSIP will submit all 100,000 images to web sites such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility portal and “MorphBank,” an extensive repository of flora and fauna images paired with searchable digital annotations by expert biologists. MorphBank enables researchers to access images from different herbaria instantly.
In addition, students of all ages will play a key role. DSPSIP will engage students in specimen-based research, and will develop and implement a lesson package to introduce those at the middle- and high-school levels to the distinctiveness of East Gulf Coastal Plain plant life and the process and value of scientific specimen collecting.
The TROY database, along with the completion of the imaging project in 2008 will make Troy Herbarium specimens the most electronically accessible in Alabama.
CURRENT FACULTY RESEARCH
Dr. Alvin Diamond
1. The vascular flora of Butler County, Alabama.
Dr. Michael Woods:
1. The genus
Lespedeza (Fabaceae) in Alabama.
2. The genus Kummerowia (Fabaceae) in Alabama.
CURRENT STUDENT RESEARCH
Lindsay Leverett: (working with Dr. Woods)
The genus Indigofera (Fabaceae) in Alabama.
Kaleb Dyess: (working with Dr. Diamond)
Livestock Poisoning Plants of Southeastern Alabama
RECENT M.S. THESES COMPLETED
Shelley Tuck. 2005. A taxonomic and distributional study of Ipomoea (Convolvulaceae) in Alabama. Shelley is an Environmental Scientist with CDG Engineers in Andalusia, Alabama
Tiffany Pennington. 2001. The vascular flora of Dale County, Alabama. Tiffany is currently an Instructor of Biology at Keiser College in Tallahassee, Florida.
Brian Martin. 2001. The vascular flora of Coffee County, Alabama. Brian is a Land Stewart with The Nature Conservancy, Alabama Chapter in Birmingham, Alabama.
Hannelore Rundell. 1999. The vascular flora of Ech Lake, Alabama. Ph.D. from the the University of Wuerzburg, Germany. Her research is “Mapping the potential vegetation of Lower Franconia, illustration of potential changes with future climatic change and analysis of the possible effect on real vegetation with the help of geographical information system”. Hannelore currently operates RundellConsult in Nüdlingen, Germany.
RECENT UNDERGRADUATE PROJECTS COMPLETED
Jann Key 2007. "The genus Rhynchosia (Fabaceae) in Alabama.
Thomas Windham 2005. "The fern and fern allies of southeastern Alabama".
Kenneth Thomason. 2002. “Investigations of the reproductive biology of the rare Warea sessilifolia Nash”.
Andy Hall and Brian Martin. 2001. “The vascular flora of the Pike County Pocosin Nature Preserve.”.
Brian Prazinko. 2000. “The vascular flora of Dale County Lake, Alabama”.
Jeanese Holmes-Reiss: 1998. “The vascular flora of Pike County Lake, Alabama.”