On March 2, at 7 pm, in the Reeves Auditorium of the North Carolina Botanical Garden’s Education Center — Todd Witcher, executive director of Discover Life in America, will give a presentation on the Great Smoky Mountains All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory. This lecture is free, but please call to reserve a seat: 962-0522. The opening reception for the “Discovering Life in America” exhibit at the Garden (see below) follows this lecture.
Discover Life in America (DLIA) is a non-profit organization involved in a quest to identify and understand all species of life within an 800-square-mile ecosystem in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Researchers seek knowledge about the components, abundance, and diversity of life—from spiders in the soil to slime molds in the forest canopy. The primary tool of DLIA is the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, or ATBI, which brings scientists from around the world to inventory the estimated 80,000–100,000 species of living organisms in the park. To date DLIA, through the ATBI project, has documented over 900 species new to science and over 6,500 species that are new to the park!
“Discovering Life in America” DLIA images
This fascinating series of prints, made from high-resolution color scans of specimens, showcases the beauty and diversity of life that exists within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, of North Carolina and Tennessee. This exhibit will be on display from March 2 to April 22, 2010, in the Eleanor Pegg Exhibit Hall of the North Carolina Botanical Garden’s Education Center. http://www.ncbg.unc.edu for more information.
