UNM Regents’ Lecturer and Biology Professor Tim Lowrey was elected recently to the Board of Directors of the Flora North America Association, a bi-national collaboration of more than 30 U.S. and Canadian institutions and organizations involved in a project titled, Flora of North America. The project involves botanists who are studying and characterizing the plants of the region and the need for authoritative information for basic and applied research, conservation, and resource management.
Photo: Tim Lowrey
The project goal is to make flora as clear, concise and informative as practical so that it can serve as an important resource for both botanists and nonbotanists.
“The Flora North America Program is a massive international project to provide a published account of the 20,000+ species in North America north of Mexico,” said Lowrey, who is also the curator of the UNM Herbarium in the Museum of Southwestern Biology. “At the finish of the project, nearly 10 percent of the world's plant species will be treated in 30 volumes. I am very happy to be elected to the Board of Directors to help guide the project to completion in 2012."
A flora is a systematic account of the plant species of a given area — in this case, North America, north of Mexico. Flora of North America builds upon the cumulative wealth of information acquired since botanical studies began in the United States and Canada more than two centuries ago. The flora is intended to serve both as a means of identifying plants within the region and as a systematic conspectus of the North American flora.
The Board of Directors serves as the governing body of the project. The officers include a president, vice president and editorial director, vice president for Business and Development, secretary and treasurer. The board consists of taxon editors, regional coordinators, a bibliographic editor, a nomenclatural editor, a managing editor and liaisons to governmental agencies in the U.S. and Canada.
Lowrey's research interests include plant systematics, flowering plants of the tropics, hybridization in plants, plant breeding systems and reproductive biology. His background includes a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of California, Berkeley (1981); a Master of Science in Biology from Utah State University (1977); and a Bachelor of Science in Botany, also from Utah State University (1974).
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at October 7, 2009 11:20 AM