Alison joined FEMC as the Director in 2022. Alison brings a wealth of experience in interdisciplinary environmental work, spanning disciplines from remote sensing and landscape modeling to ecosystem services and stakeholder engagement. She has a M.S. and a PhD in Natural Resources from UVM; the former focused on mapping forest change in New England, while the latter examined how environmental change affects cultural ecosystem services. Alison previously developed Lake Champlain Sea Grant's Watershed Forestry Partnership. She has also worked in environmental advocacy and community outreach in Washington, DC. Outside of work she can usually be found hiking, rock climbing, or exploring the woods looking for interesting mushrooms.

My research is cross-disciplinary with the ultimate goal of scaling plot-based forest health relationships to a landscape-scale using remote sensing and GIS modeling. To date, this work has focused on the detection and mapping of pre-visual forest decline symptoms resulting from invasive species, global climate change and acid deposition/nutrient depletion. These techniques provide a much-needed tool for the early detection of new and existing stressors and will allow forest management agencies to focus management efforts before stands are severely impacted.

Ben is the Monitoring Coordinator for FEMC. He oversees the forest health monitoring program, maintains FEMC's other environmental monitoring networks, and works with the monitoring data to help our partners assess long-term changes in our forested ecosystems. He comes to the FEMC from the USDA Agricultural Research Service where he served as a Research Ecologist based in Boise, Idaho. He has a background in post-fire restoration, invasive and rare plant ecology, continuous forest inventory and monitoring, remote sensing, and data management. He has worked in a variety of environments ranging from northeastern forests of NY and VT, riparian and montane forests of Colorado, and throughout the Great Basin. Outside of work, he enjoys traditional woodworking, telemark skiing, and natural building.

Nancy Voorhis is a Database and Web Developer for the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative (FEMC). She works in the web development team which is responsible for the development and management of the FEMC data archive, website, and associated cyberinfrastructure. She most recently worked as a consultant developing software, performing web and database backend programming and providing system and network support to nonprofits and educational institutions. She started her career working for the USDA Forest Service as a Research Forester. Outside of work, she enjoys being active, and preferably outside, pursuing hiking, biking, cross country skiing, tennis, swimming – depending on the season.