Kasey Rolih earned her M.A. in biology from the Department of Biological Sciences at Smith College in 1999, where she studied the ecology of macrolichens in western Massachusetts. She received her B.S. in Plant and Soil Sciences in 1989 from the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Massachusetts. She is currently a research associate in the Department of Natural Resources Conservation at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Kasey is currently involved in several projects at UMass, including the Landscape Ecology Program's Biodiversity Project with Kevin McGarigal, Brad Compton, Scott Jackson, and Eduard Ene, and in open space planning in Berkshire County with Laurie Sanders and Scott Jackson, in cooperation with the Berkshire Regional Planning Commisssion (http://www.berkshireplanning.org/). Kasey's interest is in conservation of open space using both rare and common natural communities as a starting point for prioritization. One of the goals of the Biodiversity Project is strengthening current approaches to field work that complement vegetation mapping using remotely-sensed satellite images, and the development of predictive models designed to locate ecologically important natural communities. She is a member of a six-person team that developed a natural community map and coarse-filter biodiversity assessment of the 1200 km2 Housatonic River watershed in Massachusetts, the Conservation Assessment Prioritization System (CAPS, formerly known as the Housatonic Biodiversity Project). The team continues to develop this expert system to model potential biodiversity value using a number of "biodiversity filters" which will assess the content, spatial character, context, and condition of each point in the watershed at a 15m cell size. Results of the analysis will be incorporated into open space plans for the towns of Alford, Monterey, and Tyringham. Recently she and two of her colleagues completed AquaLand, a grid-based software and technical guide for the Living Waters Project of the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program (http://www.state.ma.us/dfwele/dfw/nhesp/nhaqua.htm). The software will analyze the contribution of upstream aquatic and terrestrial systems to targeted aquatic habitats across Massachusetts.

Kasey is also a lichen specialist with the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) Program Lichen Communities Indicator (http://fia.fs.fed.us/lichen/) project where she and other lichenologists conduct workshops to teach lichen identification to non-specialist foresters employed by the Forest Service.