The Authors

Bruce McCune is a Professor in the Department of Botany & Plant Pathology at Oregon State University, Corvallis. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been at Oregon State University since 1987. He teaches classes in community analysis, lichens, and bryophytes.  His research focuses on lichenology, the ecology of temperate forest epiphytes, community responses to forest management practices and air pollution, and development of numerical tools for analyzing ecological communities. McCune is a principal programmer and author of PC-ORD, a software package for multivariate analysis of ecological data. He is an author of over 75 papers in ecology and lichenology and three books on lichenology.

James B. Grace is a Senior Research Ecologist at the USGS National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. He received his Ph.D. in 1980 from Michigan State University, East Lansing. He has been at the NWRC since 1992.  The primary focus of his research program is the ecology of coastal ecosystems, especially coastal prairie and coastal wetlands. His current research centers on predicting the effects of fire and other environmental influences on coastal communities with a special emphasis on impacts on exotic species. He is particularly interested in the mechanisms of interaction among plants that determine the long-term responses to environmental factors. He is a leader in the application of structural equation models in ecology.  He has authored over 75 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in ecology and edited a book on Plant Competition.

Dean L. Urban is an Associate Professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in 1986 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and has been at Duke University since 1994. He directs the Landscape Ecology Laboratory and teaches classes in landscape ecology, spatial analysis, and multivariate analysis. His expertise is in landscape ecology, conservation biology, forest community ecology, spatial analysis, multivariate analysis, and simulation modeling. He is developing new analytic approaches to applications of immediate practical concern, such as conservation planning.