Carolyn Mehl is a co-founder of the Ecosystem Management Research Institute.  Carolyn is a senior wildlife and ecosystem ecologist with particular expertise in landscape assessment and conservation planning to support biodiversity objectives at the landscape scale. She is particularly skilled at developing vegetation classification systems that describe the full range of ecosystem diversity based on historical disturbance regimes. Carolyn also has considerable experience with describing and quantifying forest vegetation characteristics and running spatially explicit vegetation dynamics models to quantify historical range of variablity.  She has over 20 years of experience in resource management and planning.  Carolyn obtained her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Michigan State University and her employment background is diverse, having worked in four different regions of the United States and Canada.  Previous employers include Boise Cascade Corporation in Idaho, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Environmental Protection Agency in Illinois, Golder Associates in Alberta, Canada, and the US Army Corps of Engineers in Mississippi.  In her position with Boise Cascade Corporation, Carolyn was project ecologist for the Idaho Ecosystem Management Project.  Carolyn also serves as a volunteer for several other local non-profits including the Seeley Lake Community Foundation and the Clearwater Resource Council.