U.S. bryologist and peatland expert. Dale Vitt is Professor and Chair of the Department of Plant Biology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He specialises in ecosystem dynamics, biogeochemistry and development of peatlands. Vitt also has a continuing interest in bryophyte systematics, including tropical, temperate and arctic mosses. Vitt gained his BSc in 1967 at Southeast Missouri State University and his MSc the following year at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He went on to complete the thesis "The Family Orthotrichaceae (Musci) in North America, North of Mexico" for his PhD (1970), also at Michigan. Vitt joined the University of Alberta after his doctorate, where he became a biology professor in 1980. He was director of the Devonian Botanic Garden from 1992-2000, after which he joined Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Vitt has made extensive plant collections, carrying out fieldwork in a large number of different countries. A recognised authority on peatlands, he provided the subject section in the 2008 Encyclopedia of Ecology (edited by S.E. Jorgensen and B. Fath). He has published four books and more than 200 papers over the course of his career, as well as chapters and other articles. He was editor-in-chief of The Bryologist for over ten years from 1994 and has served in editorial positions and on the editorial boards of several other publications. Vitt received the Outstanding Scholar Award from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale in 2010, and was made an honorary professor at the Institute of Applied Ecology at China's Academia Sinica, Shenyang, in 1995.

Sources:
Dale Vitt, Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University:
http://www.plantbiology.siu.edu/BioPages/Vitt.bio.html
http://www.plant.siu.edu/faculty/vitt/Research.html.