Friends of the Ahart Herbarium Annual Meeting and Keynote Address
Thursday, October 15, 2026
6:30 – 8:00 PM (Via Zoom)
Friends of the Ahart Herbarium Annual Meeting
6:30 – 7:00 PM
&
Annual Meeting Keynote:
What Can You Do in CCH2?
by Katelin Pearson
(Simbiota Support Hub)
7:00 – 8:00 PM
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://csuchico.zoom.us/meeting/register/ed69gQZdTFWwQoFrc9tj6g
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
What Can You Do in CCH2?
Presented by Katelin Pearson
(Simbiota Support Hub)
Herbarium specimens are far more than preserved plants—they are a powerful record of where plants occur, how they vary, and how they interact with their environments across space and time. As these specimens are digitized, their information becomes increasingly accessible, opening new possibilities for research, conservation, education, and beyond. The Consortium of California Herbaria’s CCH2 portal brings together digitized specimen data from herbaria across California and provides a suite of tools for exploring and putting those data to work. In this talk, I’ll trace the evolution of CCH2, showcase exciting ways researchers are using specimen data, and reveal some of the portal’s lesser-known tools and features that can help unlock even more from these foundational collections.
Katie Pearson (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4947-7662) is a botanist, data manager, and biodiversity data scientist with interests in herbarium digitization and phenology. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Katie earned her Master's at the Florida State University, where she curated the FSU Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium. She moved to San Luis Obispo, California to manage the California Phenology Network: a collaborative herbarium digitization project that started with 22 California herbaria and launched the CCH2 data portal. Katie now works for the Symbiota Support Hub, where she is project and data manager for CCH2 and over 50 other biodiversity specimen data portals.