Plant Information & Technology Transfer for Nepal
Data repatriation is an increasingly important issue. Under the aegis of the UK government's Darwin Initiative, The Natural History Museum (London) and Tribhuvan University (Kathmandu) have joined forces to undertake a project to repatriate plant information and technology for Nepal.
Project background
Nepal, which is slightly larger than England and Wales combined, presents perhaps the greatest range in elevation (from near sea level to the top of Mt. Everest, at 8,848 m) of any country. The range of natural vegetation in Nepal is similarly varied, from tropical lowland rainforest to sterile alpine rock and ice fields. It is evident that Nepal is a crossroads of migration in the Himalayan region, overlapping between eastern and western Himalayan elements. What makes Nepal so interesting to botanists worldwide is the fact that a country one-seventh the size of the USA, has nearly half as many flowering plants as the USA and Canada combined.
The Natural History Museum (NHM) possesses a large and unique body of information on Nepalese plants, data which is urgently needed in Nepal. The NHM has also published the principal reference on Nepalese plant taxonomy. The Nepalese are anxious to document the vast floristic diversity of their predominantly rural nation, which relies heavily on local usage of plants, but are unable to contemplate such a project without first having unhindered access to relevant information that is not available within the country. Building on long-established British/Nepalese links, this project will not only repatriate floristic data from specimens currently held at the NHM but will share the expertise of its staff with the Nepalese researchers. The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh have signalled willingness for their type holdings to be included in this work, allowing full coverage of British-held materials.
The project will involve local researchers being trained at NHM, helping create an expanded, Nepalese-based capability for future work. Meanwhile, the organized and readily available information that will be gathered by this project will be a key resource for the management of proper and sustainable utilization of the plants of Nepal.
Project details
Name of the project: Plant Information and Technology Transfer for Nepal
Funding agency: Darwin Initiative (UK)
Collaborating institutes: The Natural History Museum, London, and Tribhuvan University, Nepal
Length of project: October 1997 to October 1999
Objectives
The most important information resources for Nepalese plants reside in the UK. The main objective of the project is to transfer vital information in the form of type and other representative specimens of vascular plants in Nepal by:
- repatriating data on types, historical and other important collections in high quality electronic images and hard copy
- making available existing baseline data to Nepal by converting the Enumeration of the Flowering Plants of Nepal (published by the Museum in the 1970s and 1980s) into a database format, with the help of Japanese colleagues
- facilitating further studies by providing a bibliography of works (in the form of a bibliography database) covering or including Nepalese taxa, that post-dates the Enumeration
- providing a core of Nepalese researchers trained in capturing specimen data.
Outputs
- Database of the Nepalese types and other representative specimens in UK herbaria.
- CD-ROM high-resolution image reference collection (types and representative specimens).
- Bibliography database of floristic works relevant to Nepal.
- Database of Nepalese Gazetteer (localities of collections in Nepal)
- Baseline floristic database of Nepalese plants (Enumeration of Flowering Plants of Nepal in database).
- Training for five Nepalese botanists in UK during the project (a Nepalese co-ordinator, the Darwin Fellow, for a period of two years, and four postgraduate Darwin Scholars for a period of 3 months each).
For further information please contact
| Krishna Shrestha* | Bob Press Associate Keeper Phone: (0)20 7942 5748 jrp@nhm.ac.uk Department of Botany The Natural History Museum London, SW7 5BD Fax: +44(0)20 7942 5529 |
*Associate Professor, Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal.