The research and conservation arms of the Missouri Botanical Garden perform good work that matters to the whole world. It is often under-appreciated how they build intellectual capital in the St. Louis metro area, providing a more fertile environment from which other organizations and commercial enterprises, including startups, sometimes germinate and sprout.

Two Saint Louis NGO’s Making an Impact on the World and Increasing St. Louis’ Collective Intelligence

The Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development

The Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development consolidates and applies the Garden’s scientific expertise to ensure that the planet’s biological diversity is safeguarded and available for future use. The CCSD bridges the gap between conservation efforts and the Garden’s scientific research in plant systematics and floristics.

The CCSD’s Mission is “to safeguard Earth’s biodiversity through the collaborative development and wise application of scientific expertise and resources.”

The Garden’s Center for Plant Conservation

The Garden’s Center for Plant Conservation (CPC) is a trusted authority on plant conservation science and practices, and ensures that conservationists are equipped with the information and resources needed to best save plants.

CPC safeguards rare plants by advancing science-based conservation practices, connecting and empowering plant conservationists, and inspiring all to protect biodiversity for future generations. The CPC’s goals include:

• Protect: Rare plants included in the National Collection are safeguarded from extinction and can help conservationists restore healthy, diverse populations to nature.
• Educate: CPC’s Rare Plant Academy provides training and tools to prepare the next generation of rare plant conservationists.
• Connect: Contributing to the Rare Plant Academy Forum gives plant professionals the opportunity to share their knowledge and help others learn from their experience.
• Advocate: Advocacy is an important tool at CPC’s disposal to use in saving rare and endangered plants. In the broadest sense of the word, advocacy means to share and communicate the mission of the CPC organization. Sometimes, however, public policies, laws and regulations hinder, thwart and even counter CPC’s mission of saving plants. Thus, CPC urges legislators to pass legislation and policy favorable for plant survival.

The Garden’s William L. Brown Center

The William L. Brown Center (WLBC) is dedicated to the study of plants, understanding the relationships between humans, plants and their environment, and the conservation of plant species and knowledge for future generations. Ethnobotanists at the WLBC strive to preserve local knowledge about plants as they work with local people to promote sustainable use of existing resources.

One of the Center’s goals is to address the lack of adequate research capacity in developing countries that are home to the majority of the world’s plant species. Training takes place in the field, at workshops, or through collaborating universities in St. Louis and ranges from informal hands-on training to formal graduate degree education.

The Garden’s Center for Biodiversity Informatics

The Center for Biodiversity Informatics (CBI) at the Garden seeks to provide innovative technology solutions to the global community of life science scholars in order to mobilize, integrate, and repatriate data about the world’s biodiversity.

“Biodiversity informatics” is a term generally used in the broad sense to apply to computerized handling of any biodiversity information. More specifically, it is defined as the creation, integration, analysis, and understanding of information regarding biological diversity.

Currently, efforts are underway to make the vast, decentralized resources of global biodiversity information – accumulated through the efforts of scholars over the past centuries – available in digital form. Imposing consistency and compatibility among the scores of searchable databases on the world’s biota is an enormous challenge within the field.

The Center for Biodiversity Informatics, along with hundreds of practitioners around the world and numerous people involved with the design and construction of taxonomic databases, are collaborating to tackle these challenges. CBI has three major objectives which guide their decisions on which projects and services to support:

1. Mobilize biodiversity data to support the research activities of scientists and students around the world.  CBI assists in the publication of such data through its leadership role in the development of content repositories to access plant specimens (Tropicos), species data (World Flora Online), biodiversity literature (Biodiversity Heritage Library), and living collections at the Garden information (Living Collections Management System). These repositories provide primary, authoritative data used in systematics, conservation, ecological restoration, sustainable land management, and all other areas of life science research.
2. Increase usability of biodiversity information by advocating the open and transparent publication of data. There exists a wealth of primary data on the world’s biota, but much of it is held in closed systems. In order to make these data available to the widest audience possible, barriers between content holders and consumers need to be removed by publishing data in ways that provide attribution to their source, but do not impede access.
3. Encourage responsible stewardship of biodiversity information through adoption of community standards. Biodiversity datasets are most easily exchanged and integrated into other efforts when published according to community standards. CBI plays an important role in the stewardship of data through active participation in writing and extending international biodiversity data standards.

How the Saint Louis Zoo and Missouri Botanical Garden Make a Difference to the World