(Photo credit: Jeff Eden © RBG Kew)
A University of Queensland researcher has contributed to a landmark global report warning that tens of thousands of plant and fungi species face extinction.
Associate Professor Diana Fisher from UQ's School of the Environment co-authored a chapter in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew's State of the World's Plants and Fungi 2026 report.
Working alongside Associate Professor Aelys Humphreys from Stockholm University, Dr Fisher contributed chapter 7 titled, 'New ways to quantify global and local extinctions could enhance understanding of plant diversity loss', which draws attention to the scale of the crisis.
Dr Fisher and the team explored how digitised herbarium specimen data could be used to infer both current and ongoing plant extinctions, applying probability-based methods already common in climate science and other fields for over 30 years, but rarely used for plants.
The report, its sixth edition, brings together more than 400 scientists across 40 countries to examine how emerging technology is transforming conservation efforts.
