| --- |
| license: cc-by-nc-4.0 |
| tags: |
| - herbarium |
| - damaged-leaves |
| - lymantria-dispar |
| - quercus-rubra |
| - invasive-species |
| - defoliation |
| - second-flush |
| - ecology |
| - botanical-photography |
| - botanical |
| - ecological-damage |
| - cyclegan |
| - computational-remediation |
| - generative-adversarial-network |
| - neural-network-layers |
| - image-dataset |
| - training-data |
| - machine-learning-in-art |
| - speculative-design |
| - interspecies |
| - interspecies-entanglements |
| - environmental-humanities |
| - environmental-history |
| - digital-humanities |
| - posthumanism |
| - sympoiesis |
| - silk-industry-history |
| - plant-machine |
| - plant-machine-relationships |
| - artist-dataset |
| - digital-herbarium |
| - vermont |
| - colchester-vermont |
| - north-america |
| pretty_name: Damaged Leaf Herbarium |
| size_categories: |
| - 1K<n<10K |
| citation: | |
| @dataset{karson_damaged_leaf_herbarium_2026, |
| author = {Karson, Jennifer L.}, |
| title = {Damaged Leaf Herbarium: An Initial Curated Selection of Insect-Damaged, Regenerated, and Computationally Remediated Leaves}, |
| year = {2026}, |
| publisher = {Harvard Dataverse}, |
| doi = {10.7910/DVN/ABDI7R}, |
| url = {https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ABDI7R}, |
| license = {CC BY-NC 4.0} |
| } |
| --- |
| |
| # Damaged Leaf Herbarium |
|
|
| **An Initial Curated Selection of Insect-Damaged, Regenerated, and Computationally Remediated Leaves** |
|
|
| Jennifer L. Karson | Plant Machine Design Group | University of Vermont |
|
|
| 📦 **Archival dataset record and DOI:** [https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ABDI7R](https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ABDI7R) |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Description |
|
|
| This is an initial curated release of approximately 1,600 tree leaves selected from the Damaged Leaf Herbarium, a collection of 10,000+ damaged leaves collected by the author in Colchester, Vermont, USA during *Lymantria dispar* outbreak years 2021 and 2022. The leaves were photographed by the University of Vermont Plant Machine Design Group. Also included is a sample of second generation regrowth — second flush leaves from a *Quercus rubra* that were initially defoliated in the early spring of the outbreak years. Also included is a sample of damaged leaves remediated through a speculative computational design project that imagines sympoietic plant-machine relationships using a customized version of CycleGAN, one that reveals the visual output of each layer of the neural network. |
|
|
| A full dataset release is planned in conjunction with forthcoming publications and art exhibitions. The larger project explores interspecies entanglements in relation to these insect outbreaks and the historic introduction of *Lymantria dispar* to North America, and its connection to late 19th century ambitions to establish a silk industry in the United States. |
|
|
| Researchers wishing to be notified of the full release may contact the author at jennifer.karson@uvm.edu. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Dataset Structure |
|
|
| The dataset contains three categories of images: |
|
|
| **damaged/** — Original field photographs of *Lymantria dispar* damaged *Quercus rubra* leaves, organized into four curated collections (table_i through table_iv) reflecting their original presentation as exhibited artworks. The groupings are curatorial rather than taxonomic. |
|
|
| **second_generation/** — Second flush leaves from *Quercus rubra* trees that were initially defoliated during the outbreak years. Filenames retain their original table prefix indicating curatorial provenance. |
| |
| **remediated/** — Four damaged leaves computationally remediated using a customized version of CycleGAN, organized by leaf ID (leaf_reg_4409, leaf_reg_4415, leaf_reg_4416, leaf_reg_7058). Each leaf folder contains eight images revealing the visual output of each layer of the neural network, from the original damaged source (register_00) to the fully remediated output (register_07). |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## Metadata |
| |
| A complete metadata CSV (`damaged_leaf_herbarium_V1_metadata.csv`) is included with the following fields: |
| |
| `file_name` | `relative_path` | `file_type` | `category` | `table` | `leaf_id` | `register` | `register_label` | `collection_years` | `photograph_date` | `image_width` | `image_height` | `file_size` | `creator` | `copyright` | `rights` | `license` | `dataset` | `dataset_version` | `source` | `contact` |
| |
| All images have provenance metadata embedded directly in their EXIF/XMP fields. |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## Citation |
| |
| If you use this dataset please cite: |
| |
| > Karson, Jennifer L. *Damaged Leaf Herbarium: An Initial Curated Selection of Insect-Damaged, Regenerated, and Computationally Remediated Leaves*. Harvard Dataverse, V1, 2026. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ABDI7R |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## License |
| |
| This dataset is released under [CC BY-NC 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Use requires attribution to Jennifer L. Karson and the Plant Machine Design Group, University of Vermont. Commercial use is not permitted. |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## Contact |
| |
| Jennifer L. Karson |
| Plant Machine Design Group |
| University of Vermont |
| jennifer.karson@uvm.edu |
