I am a plant ecologist and lichenologist with over 20 years of applied experience working in the San Francisco Bay Area. I started Benson Bio Consulting in 2010 and provide botanical consulting services to support environmental compliance, natural resource management, conservation, and research. Specific skill sets I offer include:

• fine-scale vegetation mapping,

• rare plant and vegetation surveys,

• designing and implementing long-term monitoring strategies, and

• developing natural resource management plans.

I specialize in ground-based mapping techniques for making fine-scale vegetation maps of herbaceous communities, primarily grasslands and salt marshes. Even with the most current technology, remote sensing techniques are unable to accurately map most herbaceous communities because unique signatures can not be detected. I have honed my skills in ground-based mapping over the past seven years and 4,000+ acres mapped. This work is important for conservation because many of California’s grassland and salt marsh vegetation types are rare.

When the grasses and flowers are not in bloom, I study lichens. My graduate research focused on vertical gradients of lichen communities in the canopy of old growth forests in interior British Columbia, Canada. Currently, I am investigating community composition and species distribution of lichens in California’s coastal fog zone. Like the coast redwood, some lichen species that reside in the fog zone depend on moisture provided by coastal fog during the summer months. The fate of coastal fog is uncertain according to climate change models. I am interested in monitoring fog zone lichens to understand their current condition and see how they respond to a changing climate.