Natural Science Collections Alliance

On 21 July, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a joint memorandum providing guidance to federal agencies on the formulation of science and technology priorities in the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget.

The four-page document includes a provision on federal science collections: “Agencies should implement strategies for increasing the benefits for science and society derived from scientific collections by following the recommendations in the report by the Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections and efforts outlined in the National R&D Strategy for Microbial Forensics.”

The memo also directs agencies to invest in high-risk, high-reward research, support multidisciplinary research, and engage in international scientific collaboration.  Additionally, the memo outlines priorities in the areas of energy, environment, health, agriculture and economy.

Click here to read the complete memorandum.

The Documentation Committee of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) requests your participation in a survey involving best practice topics pertinent to natural history museums.  The survey seeks to better understand the information and resource needs of the natural history collections community, including museums, parks, university collections, and other organizations caring for natural and cultural history collections.  The purpose of the survey is to identify, collect, and provide information about best practices specific to natural history collections, including current helpful resources.  Holes or gaps in best practices need to be identified and addressed.  This survey is the first step in identifying these holes.

The results of this survey will be used to guide the creation of an in-depth resource website on natural history collections best practices, to be hosted by the SPNHC at http://www.spnhc.org.  The results will also be published in the SPNHC Journal, “Collection Forum.”  All answers will remain confidential and no results will be publicly associated with an institution or individual unless specific permission is granted.

Participation in the survey should take about 10 minutes.  To participate, visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DLPDRNX.

A collection of over 10 million shells housed at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences is being used by scientists to better understand historical levels of environmental contamination in the Gulf of Mexico.  The collection, dating back to 1812, includes more than 100 oyster shells collected from the Gulf between 1887 and 1960.

Shells can serve as a record of water pollution, as mollusks incorporate ingested contaminants, such as hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and heavy metals, into their shells.  Scientists are currently comparing the composition of shells in the museum with oysters collected after the BP oil spill.  This analysis should reveal if water pollution levels have changed throughout the region in the wake of the oil spill.

“You never know what these things will be useful for,” said Peter Roopnarine, the leader of the ongoing study, whose first results are expected by September. “Each individual shell is going to give us a record back in time.”

Botanic Gardens Conservation International — US, United States Botanic Garden, and Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum are conducting an important survey to document all living plant collections in North America as part of a regional and global assessment.  Survey organizers thank those who have already contributed their collection’s taxa list to the PlantSearch database, and encourage other collection professionals to participate before the survey closes on August 1, 2010.

This effort will help to fill the gap in our knowledge of plant diversity and threatened plants in cultivation.  It’s quick, easy, and free to participate.  Simply upload a spreadsheet of taxa held in your collections to the PlantSearch database.

To participate, visit www.bgci.org/usa/MakeYourCollectionsCount.  Please contact Abby Hird at abby_hird@harvard.edu or (617) 384-5774 if you have questions or require assistance in completing the survey.

Two recent publications on pollution in National Parks utilized natural history collections to establish baselines of environmental contamination.  Published in the June 15 issue of Environmental Science and Technology, the studies found that pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were prevalent throughout National Parks in the western United States.

“I think what continues to surprise me even though we’ve been studying this issue for a while now is that when we think of parks, we think of them being very pristine and especially with the more remote sites within the parks, we think of them as being pristine, but, in fact, there is deposition of pollutants within those sites and it can be significant in some of those areas,” said Staci Simonich, an associate professor of environmental and molecular toxicology at Oregon State University and an investigator on both of the studies.  Simonich noted that the pesticide pollution is so routine in contemporary society that researchers had to use museum specimens to find baseline data that existed prior to pesticide use.

On June 23, 2010, the NSC Alliance sent a letter to Senate committee staff working to develop the chamber’s version of the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act.  In short, the NSC Alliance requested that the Senate clarify and expand the provisions of Section 121 in the House-passed version of the legislation.  The letter references proposed legislative language developed collaboratively by the American Museum of Natural History and the NSC Alliance.

Click here to read the complete NSC Alliance letter.

President Obama wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on June 18 to request a number of changes to his administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2011.  Among the amendments was a request to increase the FY 2011 budget for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to $265,869,000, an increase of $313,000 over the amount in the President’s budget.  Apparently the original budget, sent to Congress in February, did not reflect the accurate funding level for the agency.  If appropriated by Congress, the revised budget for IMLS would equal the amount appropriated to the agency in FY 2010, after Congressional earmarks are accounted for.

On June 18, 2010, the NSC Alliance wrote to Representative Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) to thank her for recognizing the importance of scientific collections to our capacity to understand how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will influence the biological systems of the Gulf of Mexico.  Bordallo is Chair of the House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife.  Her panel recently held a hearing during which Dr. Jonathan Coddington, associate director of research and collections at the National Museum of Natural History, testified about the importance of natural history collections to describing quantitatively the pre-spill Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.  These collections document the biological diversity of the region prior to the oil spill, and will contribute to assessments of the spill’s environmental impacts.

NSC Alliance also noted that science collections are equally important to basic science and to understanding or mitigating the effects of other environmental and public health problems.  The letter drew attention to the NSC Alliance request that President Obama promulgate an Executive Order for the Preservation and Use of Science Collections.

The complete letter is available here.

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife held a hearing on June 15 to consider the state of environmental science in the Gulf of Mexico. The Subcommittee heard testimony about scientific needs related to the BP oil spill response from representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Smithsonian Institution, and non-federal scientists.

Among the first panel of witnesses was Dr. Jonathan Coddington, associate director of research and collections at the National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Coddington testified about the value of biological collections in assessing the impacts of the oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Since 1979, the Smithsonian has curated biological specimens collected by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) during environmental assessments of the outer continental shelf. These assessments of the biological, sedimentary, physio-chemical, and oceanographic conditions of U.S. waters serve as pre-drilling environmental baselines.

In the wake of the BP spill, the more than 350,000 lots of biological specimens that are held by the National Museum of Natural History are invaluable. “Regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, knowing what the conditions were like before the event is essential,” wrote Coddington in his testimony. “However, approximately one third of MMS collections deposited at the Smithsonian need further work in order to optimally support research related to the oil spill.” This work ranges from identification of species to digitization of specimens. Subcommittee Chairwoman Madeleine Bordallo (D-GU) asked Dr. Coddington how much it would cost to complete this work. Coddington estimated that it would cost $9 million over two years to make all relevant collections publically available.

Click here to read Dr. Coddington’s written testimony

Delegates to the United Nations have given a green light to a plan to establish a new international panel to review the science underpinning policy decisions on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) will be charged with “bridg[ing] the gulf between the wealth of scientific knowledge — documenting accelerating declines and degradation of the natural world — and the decisive government action required to reverse these damaging trends,” according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The UNEP foresees the IPBES as an independent panel that will review science and synthesize it into reports for use by policymakers, much like the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These reports will cover the state, status, and trends of biodiversity and ecosystems, as well as outline policy options for reversing the loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation. Much of this work will involve prioritizing and synthesizing the numerous reports and assessments on biodiversity and ecosystem services conducted by United Nations, research centers, universities, and others.

The IPBES is expected to be formally approved by the United Nations’ environment ministers in February 2011.