our Authors

Dr. James Grace

James B. Grace is a Senior Research Scientist at the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. He received his Ph.D. in 1980 from Michigan State University, and served on the faculties of the University of Arkansas and Louisiana State University before joining the USGS in 1992. The core of his research program centers on advancing structural equation modeling methodology and furthering its application in the natural sciences. His collaborative investigations have involved a diverse set of ecosystems, from marine to alpine and from wetlands to arid lands, as well as all major taxa, from bacteria to human societies. More information can be found at https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/james-grace.

Dr. Martin Hutten

Martin Hutten is an ecologist and an avid bryologist and lichenologist. He has worked for the National Park Service and USDA Forest Service, taking on the noble work of fighting invasive plants, promoting biodiversity, and managing forests and people. Martin has worked at Olympic, Craters of the Moon, Yosemite, and Lassen National Parks, among many other places. He completed a PhD at Oregon State University in 2014 with a dissertation entitled, "Yosemite Region Nitrogen Deposition and Patterns in the Composition of Lichen Communities." Martin was the lead author and photographer for the hard-to-find pocket guidebook, 101 Common Mosses, Liverworts, and Lichens of the Olympic Peninsula. Currently Martin works as an ecologist for the USDA Forest Service in Wrangell, Alaska. In his personal time he is working on the inventory and photography of the liverworts of Southeast Alaska.

Dr. Bruce McCune

Bruce McCune is professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University. He works on biodiversity and ecology of lichens and bryophytes as well as tools for analysis of multivariate ecological data.

Bruce is a lead programmer and author for the software packages PC-ORD (beginning in 1986), HyperNiche, and the book Analysis of Ecological Communities.

His lichen and bryophyte work have led him coauthoring, among other volumes, Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest; Biotic Soil Crust Lichens of the Columbia Basin; Microlichens of the Pacific Northwest; and Common Mosses of Western Oregon and Washington. His lichenological research is published in many scholarly journals, including Bryologist, Ecological Applications, Journal of Vegetation Science, Lichenologist, Mycosphere, Mycotaxon, and North American Fungi. In 2016 he received the Acharius Medal for lifetime achievement in lichenology.

Michael Mefford

Michael J. Mefford is a lead programmer and software designer for PC-ORD (beginning in 1986) and HyperNiche. A former columnist for PC Magazine, and founder of MjM Software Design, he wrote file management utilities and other software, combining these with explanatory articles for the magazine.  An avid outdoorsman and hiker, he has scaled numerous high mountain peaks and regularly conducted breeding-season surveys of nesting raptors.

Dr. Jeri Peck

Jeri Peck is a forest community ecologist with 20 years of experience teaching introductory multivariate analyses to fellow ecologists around the globe.  She has been a researcher at universities in Oregon, Minnesota, Missouri, and Pennsylvania and a federal lab in Switzerland, has consulted with the BLM, Forest Service, and The Nature Conservancy, and taught over 70 workshops on multivariate analysis in dozens of states and nations.  Jeri began her career steeped in bryology and lichenology and thus working with species community datasets, but switched mid-career to the study of forest structure and now works mostly with habitat/environmental datasets.  The exposure to both of these very common and quite different types of ecological datasets informs the short-courses she provides for students and professional ecologists, for which she wrote the Step-by-Step book.  Currently Jeri works for Penn State, where she collaborates with the Applied Ecology (Silviculture) Lab on forest structure and offers instructional webinars several times during the academic year.  During her summers, though, she can be found exploring the natural and cultural landscapes of her native Oregon or western Europe.

Warren Hatch

Warren A. Hatch grew up in Portland, Oregon, and was educated at Catlin Gabel School, Amherst College, and Portland State University. Warren has been a public school substitute teacher for more than 35 years, eleven of those years in Los Angeles, the remaining 24+ years in Portland, Oregon. He has used superb German-made Eschenbach illuminated magnifiers to provide students (mostly in the elementary grades) with the opportunity to see (and draw) insects and spiders (later setting them free) for more than 30 years. Warren also authored videotapes and DVDs of views through a microscope, including a series titled What’s That Through the Microscope? which he often shared in a classroom setting, and which many students found engaging and challenging! In 2003 Warren was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, which was founded in 1788 “for the cultivation of the Science of Natural History.” He appreciates the community of the Linnean Society. His 2006 DVD, In One Yard: Views Through a Microscope and Up Close, was chosen as “one of the best science films of 2006” by Science Books & Films, the review journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, DC. His first book, In One Yard: Close to Nature (2015), received positive reviews in Choice, Science Books & Films, and Library Journal. Sir David Attenborough received a copy of the book and sent a handwritten note to Warren stating that “. . . I began to wonder whether I haven’t looked at my yard with the concentration and insight that you have. I must put that right. But not before I have spent more time studying your splendid book. It spurs me on.” Warren’s second book, In One Yard: Close to Nature Book 2 (2020), is the culmination of more than nine years of photographing and learning about diverse living organisms in his 1/6 acre (.07 hectare) urban yard in Portland, Oregon.