Amy has 20 years of professional experience in the application of GIS technologies to environmental characterization and natural resource modeling and has been an active conservationist most of her life. She currently serves on the board of directors for Advocates for the West and has served six years on the board of directors for the Idaho Conservation League as well as seven years for Idaho Rivers United. She was the 1997 recipient of the Idaho Conservation League’s highest award for conservation activism and in 2003 received an ‘Environmental Heroes’ award from the governing council of The Wilderness Society. She is recognized and respected in both the conservation community and the GIS professional community. Her active participation in the GIS community provides her with access to data from agencies as well as provides professional peer review of her work.

Amy has a BA in geography from Dartmouth College, an MS in geography from the University of Idaho, with an emphasis on land management, and a PhD also in geography from the University of Idaho with a minor in natural resources. Her dissertation research deals with the political ecology of forest management. Case studies of the Boise and Clearwater National Forests in Idaho are used to evaluate the balance between political, ecological, and social systems in forest policy and management. Her work builds on the Conservation Assessment of Idaho that she completed in 2003 for the Idaho Conservation League. The ecological findings of the assessment are integrated with political and social analysis in order to characterize the discrepancies that exist between forest management objectives and practices on these two forests.