Originally from the Bay Area, I lived in six other states and earned a BA in political science from Reed College in Portland, Oregon before returning to California and becoming obsessed with plants. My social science background helped orient me to the context of colonization, resource extraction, climate change and other modern anthropogenic threats through which the incredible diversity of native plants have persisted. I studied natural history and resource management at Merritt College in Oakland, CA, volunteered with the California Native Plant Society, and learned complex land management practices working for East Bay Regional Parks. As a consultant for Hexagon Bio, I conducted extensive solo fieldwork collecting soil samples on public lands throughout the western US and developed a broader perspective on the biogeographical context of California’s flora and the underdocumented biodiversity beyond the state line. Working as CalBG grad Peri Lee Pipkin’s field assistant on their flora of the Silver Peak Range in western Nevada underscored the urgency of documenting “botanical black holes” amid increasing demands for resource extraction on public lands, and I’m excited to contribute more to Nevada floristics in my graduate research.
In addition to the diversity, distribution, and conservation of plants throughout North America’s increasingly threatened arid lands, my research interests include historical ecology, environmental justice, biogeography, pollination, community ecology, dialectical biology, science communication, and critical ecology. Beyond recreational botanizing, I enjoy learning about rocks, fossils, invertebrates, lichens, fungi, and reptiles in my free time.
My thesis project is a floristic study of the Amargosa River headwaters in southern Nye County, Nevada—an area with rich biogeographic influences but little historical documentation of its flora that is facing unprecedented conservation threats from large-scale mining and other extractive industries. The Amargosa River transports essential surface and subsurface water in the most arid region of North America, and supports unique habitats including the highest concentration of endemic species anywhere in the US at Ash Meadows. However, the source of this ecologically critical hydrologic system faces dewatering and pollution due to water-intensive resource extraction, while the surrounding biodiversity remains under-documented and has never been comprehensively studied. The study area features heterogeneous topography spanning an elevational range from approximately 2600 to 6300 feet, and complex geology including extensive carbonate, volcanic and alkali substrates that are associated with edaphic specialization. With diverse vegetation types reflecting a confluence of the northern Mojave and Great Basin desert ecoregions, proximity to noted areas of endemism in Death Valley and Ash Meadows, and the relative paucity of prior botanical exploration, there is great potential for finding new occurrences of rare plants, range extensions, and previously undescribed taxa. Fieldwork conducted in 2024 added more than 60 minimum-ranked taxa to the documented flora, including the state record collection of the Death Valley monkeyflower, Diplacus rupicola. Further documentation of this flora will supply baseline biodiversity data and analysis to directly inform land management and conservation efforts.
Pictured below: Plants of the Amargosa River headwaters, left to right: Astragalus funereus, Diplacus rupicola, and Lathyrus hitchcockianus
