About the Contributors Weslynne Ashton (Ph.D. in Environmental Studies) is an assistant professor of environmental management and sustainability at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, USA. Her research and teaching focus on corporate sustainability, industrial ecology, social entrepreneurship and sustainable industrial development. She previously worked as an associate research scientist and lecturer at Yale University, with visiting scholar appointments at the National University of Singapore and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) University in India. She has also worked extensively in the Caribbean, as well as in Hawaii and India. Contact:
[email protected] Michael Bahn is an associate professor at the Institute of Ecology of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His research focus is on linking plant, soil and ecosystem processes in a global change context. He has co-edited a book on soil carbon dynam- ics (Cambridge) and is an editor of the journal Biogeosciences. He has been prin- ciple investigator/work package leader of several national and European projects, and has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and books. He contributed to a recently published white paper on research perspec- tives for LTER in Austria. Contact:
[email protected] Peter Bezák (Ph.D. in Regional Geography) works at the Institute of Landscape Ecology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia. His research interests include socio-ecological interactions in the landscape, landscape and biodiversity changes and driving forces behind these, landscape management and policy, sustainable development, participatory approaches in landscape and nature protection research. He participated in several research projects funded under EU Framework Programmes (EVALUWET, BIOSCENE, BIOPRESS, ALTER-NET) and he has monitored LIFE programme projects in Central and Eastern Europe dedicated to the support of the Natura 2000 sites.