About SAM

The Botanical Survey and Monitor (SAM) Project is an an attempt by the Pacific Northwest Herbarium (WWB) at Western Washington University (WWU) to document changes in the distributions of plants native to the Pacific Northwest. Species of plants in the Pacific Northwest vary in their abundances and distributions. Some species are common while others are rare. Moreover some are widespread and their distributions extend well beyond our region while others are narrowly endemic, being restricted to a small area within the northwest.

In either case, most of our knowledge about the distributions of the various species stems from historic records in the 1800s and 1900s, and many of those populations have not been revisited since. Can we find the locations? Are the populations still there? Many factors could have impacted plant distributions including urbanization, habitat fragmentation, overzealous collectors, and climatic changes. Have species distributions shifted in response to some of these factors? Have some populations or species gone extinct? If populations are declining, can we estimate when those species may go extinct locally and regionally?

This summer a cadre of field botanists, mostly students and recent graduates of WWU, will perform surveys throughout the Pacific Northwest to begin addressing those questions. The first step is to try to find the historic populations known from herbaria specimens, the botanical literature, and locations known by interested members of the northwest community.  The field botanists are out searching for plants and documenting the presence and absence of species across the region. You can follow their stories of discovery in this blog and on our Instagram Feed: BotanyPNW.