About Jessica
Jessica Smith is the Botany/Vegetation Ecology Team Lead at the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. The team supports Colorado’s native and rare plants and plant communities through rare plant surveys and population monitoring, weed mapping, vegetation mapping, native plant materials collection, species distribution modeling, and curating information on plant species and native plant communities in CNHP’s centralized database. With over 20 years of experience, Ms. Smith has assessed plant communities and populations in a variety of ecosystems around the country, with over ten years of experience specific to the Colorado flora. Ms. Smith holds a M.S. degree in Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maryland and an B.S. degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Georgia. She served on the board of directors for the Colorado Native Plant Society for five years, and enjoys teaching grass identification field courses.