Charles M. Crisafulli is a Research Ecologist with the USDA, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. His primary research focuses on initial and longer-term ecological responses of organisms, in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, following explosive volcanism. From 1980 to present (2017) he has worked at Mount St. Helens and since 2008 he has annually conducted field research at several other contemporary eruption sites in Patagonia, Chile. His primary research themes are processes of succession and assembly of biological communities, and chiefly focus on small mammals, birds, amphibians and arthropods. He is currently engaged in expanding and testing the generality of lessons drawn from Mount St. Helens to volcanoes in other regions of the world such as South America, Asia, and Alaska, and more broadly to developing a global volcano ecology database to access the current state of the field and to develop science strategies for the future related to investig ations of volcanically disturbed ecosystems. Virginia H. Dale is a Corporate Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in east Tennessee. She was on the first team of biologists who entered the Red Zone at Mount St. Helens after the 1980 eruption and has been studying vegetation reestablishment there ever since. Her primary research interests are disturbance ecology, plant succession, land-use change, sustainability, and environmental decision making. She has served on national scientific advisory boards for five agencies of the United States and several committees of the National Academies of Science. She was among the members of the international science community that contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientific Assessment that in 2007 received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2013, she was recognized with the Distinguished Landscape Ecologist award by the United States Regional Association of the International Associa tion fo r Landscape Ecology. Her current interest is in understanding risk and resilience in a changing world.