Diatoms of North America
Virtual microscopy: The ANSP Diatom Collection - becoming available to the world
Description: Several thousand virtual slides from the ANSP Diatom Herbarium team are now available, based on support from the National Science Foundation and the team at Drexel University. We have been scanning diatom slides using a customized system based on an Olympus BX53 microscope with a motorized stage, a Lumenera digital camera, and image processing software by Objective Imaging, LTD. The system supports scanning at various magnifications and light settings, including brightfield and differential interference contrast. To balance the goal of digitizing as many slides as possible with the need to keep file sizes manageable, we have primarily used 400x magnification. Our initial efforts focused on slides from federal surveys (US EPA, USGS) of rivers and lakes. The study sites are accompanied by detailed water chemistry and habitat data, so they are invaluable for investigating diatom ecology and biogeography.
Target Audience: This seminar will be directed at everyone interested in the arrival of virtual microscopy and opening diatom slide collections to a wider world.
