About This Site
Lichens are ubiquitous and integral to Pacific Northwest ecosystem health. But they are also difficult to learn without access to an expert. The longterm goal of this site is to help more people notice lichens, identify some common lichens and appreciate their remarkable beauty.The first stage of this site is "The Hypogymnia Species of North America". Besides being a common and easily identified genus, Hypogymnia are also a particular area of study for Bruce. By combining Bruce's expert knowledge with Sunia's background in data analysis/presentation, we hope to demonstrate a useful interactive key that is easy to use while capturing the high variability of lichens by using Bayesian probability techniques. This initial identification key is for people who already have some lichen knowledge.
The second stage of this site will cover common macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest and will be for lichen students, as we continue to experiment with the usefulness of our methods.
All photos were taken by Bruce McCune unless noted. All drawings by Alexander Mikulin unless noted.
Any feedback is much appreciated.
About Us
Dr. Bruce McCuneBruce 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 to 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.
For more information about Bruce's work, see his website.
Sunia Yang
Sunia recently retired from Stanford University after 23 years in network engineering- working in design, operations, monitoring and data visualization.
She is also a longtime nature docent with particular interests in native plants, restoration, ethnobotany and birds.