July Meeting with Guest Speaker Andrea Williams

Oaks are vital to supporting biodiversity, but many are in crisis: globally, ⅓ of oaks are vulnerable–in California, that number jumps to nearly ½. In many areas, oaks struggle to reproduce, and knowing where seedlings and saplings are is crucial information. California OakWatch collects data on oaks native to the California Floristic Province, with a particular focus on young plants and rare species. The talk will focus on Southern California oak identification, with tips on identification and how to take good data for the project.

Andrea Williams is the Director of Biodiversity Initiatives for the California Native Plant Society. She has two decades of experience in science-based public lands management: monitoring rare plants and plant communities, carrying out project compliance surveys, mapping and removing invasive plants, and responding to landscape-level threats such as Phytophthora, climate change, and altered disturbance regimes. She has worked in partnership to design indicators, metrics, status, and trends for land health; lead volunteers in botanical inventories; improve the quality and quantity of data submitted to CNDDB; and teach plant identification, field methods, and invasive plant management planning.