Inaugural Meeting of TORCH: registration deadline

[Tom Wendt]

Inaugural Meeting of TORCH-Registration Deadline is Friday, April 21!

The Texas Oklahoma Regional Consortium of 
Herbaria (TORCH) is being developed to advocate 
for and to organize herbaria in Texas and 
Oklahoma.  Four primary goals of TORCH are 
proposed:


 Provide a mechanism for communication and 
collaboration among regional herbaria of all 
types and sizes

 Promote regional data sharing and plant 
taxonomic and collections-based research

 Function as a regional consortium in the 
developing national network of herbaria

 Assist herbaria with infrastructural and 
management guidelines and problem solving

The inaugural meeting of TORCH will be held 
Saturday May 6, 2006 at the Botanical Research 
Institute of Texas (BRIT) and the Fort Worth 
Botanic Garden, in Fort Worth, Texas. All 
herbarium representatives, those who work with 
plant collections in Texas and Oklahoma, and 
interested botanists are invited to attend.

The meeting program will have three primary 
components:  1) presentations by representatives 
from  regional herbaria; 2) invited presentations 
on collections-based activities and initiatives 
impacting herbaria in Texas and Oklahoma; and 3) 
a group discussion focused on herbarium issues 
and the organization of TORCH.  Additionally, 
there will be a Saturday evening mixer, dinner, 
and presentation.  The Botanical Research 
Institute of Texas (BRIT) is sponsoring the 
meeting.

More information on TORCH and the upcoming 
meeting is available at the Herbarium 
Collaborative site at 
<http://herbaria.science.oregonstate.edu/>  under 
"Regional Networks."  Please join the Herbarium 
Collaborative and log in to download the full 
program, maps, and hotel information.

             Invited Speakers and Titles


 George Diggs, "The Illustrated Texas Floras project"

 Ron Tyrl, "The Flora of Oklahoma project: a 
committee writes keys and descriptions"

 Tom Wendt, "Online resources of the Plant 
Resources Center, University of Texas at Austin"

 Hugh Wilson, "The Digital Flora of Texas 
project: an exercise in collaboration, consensus, 
and web-based data flow"

 Bruce Hoagland, "The Oklahoma Vascular Plants Database project"

 Amanda Neill, "Atrium: A Biodiversity 
Information System for the Andes to Amazon Botany 
project at BRIT"

 Justin Williams* and William Lutterschmidt, 
"Determining large scale data gaps in museum 
collections using species area relationships."

 Wayne Elisens, "Strategies for keeping herbaria 
alive and afloat: it's not your major professor's 
herbarium anymore"

 Tim Lowrey* and Alan Prather, "United we stand 
- why it's important to build collaborative 
herbarium networks"

* speaker