I earned my doctorate at Idaho State University and now work for the Dept. of Environmental Quality in North Carolina. I use my background as an ecologist in my role as an Environmental Specialist on the regulatory side of water quality. Botanical biodiversity is a long-standing passion of mine and a wonderful reason to explore the outdoors! Environmental issues like climate change have the potential to substantially affect native biodiversity. If we have an idea of the historical and current distribution of plants, we'll be able to track changes in the future. And that's good for a bunch of reasons I'm running out of space to write about here.

iNaturalist is a great tool for ecologists and everyone! We are all scientists!