November General Membership Meeting

CNPS Vegetation Program: Documenting and Describing Sensitive Natural Communities in San Luis Obispo County and Beyond 

At our November membership meeting, CNPS Vegetation Ecologist and Program Manager Mark Bibbo will discuss recent statewide activities of the CNPS Vegetation Program, including vegetation classification and mapping projects in the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Coastal California. Mark will introduce an exciting project kicked off earlier this year in collaboration with Resource Conservation Districts (RCDs) in SLO and Monterey counties and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife including collaboration with SLO CNPS Chapter members and Cal Poly SLO professors, students and recent graduates. The project, the San Luis Obispo, Monterey, and San Benito Counties – Vegetation Inventory, Mapping and Wildfire Risk Assessment Project, will result in up-to-date fine-scale vegetation maps for the Central California Coast Range Ecoregion. Mark hopes to excite and inspire SLO Chapter members to learn more and potentially contribute.

Bio: After studying plant ecology and receiving a master’s degree from U.C. Davis, Mark began his botany career in earnest conducting vegetation surveys in the Sierra Nevada foothill and montane zones from Lassen to Sequoia on projects for the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife and CNPS Vegetation Program. After many years working as a restoration ecologist and botanist for various environmental consulting firms, he was thrilled to return to the CNPS Vegetation Program in early 2022. In his current role, Mark oversees and coordinates field-based vegetation sampling projects primarily in Central California. Mark is a proud SLUG and calls Santa Cruz home.

Social gathering starts at 7pm, chapter business and speaker starts at 730 pm. The Nomination Committee will be seeking nominations for chapter officers for 2024.