Lichens of the Southeastern Coastal Plain

The Coastal Plain of eastern North America is a biologically and ecologically diverse region home to many rare, disjunct, and endemic taxa. Although the founding father of American lichenology Edward Tuckerman described many new species from the region, the lichen biota of the Coastal Plain has for the subsequent 130 years remained understudied, a surprising fact considering its close proximity to the major metropolitan areas of the eastern United States. With this in mind we initiated intensive field studies in Florida in the 1980’s, which have expanded over the intervening decades to include adjacent states and the Atlantic Pine Barrens of New Jersey and New York. These efforts have unveiled a remarkable biota including many species previously unknown to science. Considering the drastic changes to the ecosystems of the region that are projected to result from global climate change and continued human influence we have come to the conclusion a complete inventory of the region is desperately needed. As such we have established this website to parallel one for the Ozark Ecoregion. It will be used to communicate the results of our ongoing research and as a centralized resource for users to access the data accumulated from our studies.