Herbarium 2021: Half-Earth Challenge

Overview

There are approximately 400,000 known vascular plant species with an estimated 80,000 still to be discovered. Herbaria worldwide contain an overwhelming amount of unnamed and new specimens, and with the threats of climate change, we need new tools to quicken the pace of species discovery.

The Herbarium 2021: Half-Earth Challenge is to identify vascular plant species from a large, long-tailed collection of herbarium specimens. The dataset includes more than 2.5M images representing nearly 66,000 species from the Americas, Oceania and the Pacific. The images are provided by the New York Botanical Garden, Bishop Museum, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Queensland Herbarium, and Auckland War Memorial Museum.

The most accurate models will be used on the unidentified plant specimens in the NYBG herbarium and assessed by NYBG expert taxonomists.

Competition

Start Date - 10th March 2021

End Date - 26th May 2021

Kaggle URL - https://www.kaggle.com/c/herbarium-2021-fgvc8

Organizers

Riccardo de Lutio (ETH Zürich), Damon Little (NYBG), Kimberly Watson (NYBG), Barbara Ambrose (NYBG)

Acknowledgements

The images are provided by the New York Botanical Garden, Bishop Museum, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Queensland Herbarium, and Auckland War Memorial Museum.