About the Contributors

472 About the Contributors Rob Alkemade is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). He obtained his PhD at Wageningen University in the role of nematodes in coastal ecosystems. He developed and applied models for assessing the effects of environmental change on biodiversity, first at the National Institute for the Environment and Public Health (RIVM) and later at PBL. He has a wide experience in biodiversity assessment and scenario analysis at the global level and contributed to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Global Environmental Outlooks and Global Biodiversity Outlooks. For this purpose, he developed the GLOBIO3 model. He is a visiting scientist at Wageningen Univer- sity doing research on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services. Rajendra P Shrestha received his PhD in natural resources management and currently is an Associ- ate Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. His areas of research interests include land use and land cover change focusing on land change/degradation-human interface for policy support in the context of climate change. He also has interest in livelihood studies and food security in relation to land use. He has extensively published on these topics in southeast and south Asia. His research collaboration has been with several organizations, FAO, UNDP, UNEP, IUCN, WAC and the universities in the region. Previously, he has worked as lecturer and agriculture officer in Nepal. He was also a Senior Programme Officer at the United Nations Environment Programme, Bangkok, a Visiting Scientist at Nihon University of Japan, and Roskilde University of Denmark. Yongyut Trisurat is an Associate Professor of Forestry at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand. He received PhD in natural resources management and conservation from the Asian Institute of Technol- ogy (AIT) in Thailand. He was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Geography, Freie University Berlin in 1995, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar affiliated with University of Hawaii and the East-West Center in 2005, and a Visiting Researcher at AIT in 2009. He has been active in the area of protected areas, biodiversity conservation, landscape ecology and GIS for over 15 years and has been a frequent contributor to several international agencies (e.g., ITTO, IUCN, ADB, CIDA, DANCED/DANIDA, WWF). His current research involves biodiversity conservation and climate change. In addition, he has published a number of peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on these subjects. * * * Carlos Alberto Arnillas is a research fellow of the Conservation Data Centre of the National Agrar- ian University of Lima. He received his bachelor degree in Biology in the same university. His research About the Contributors is focused on landscape ecology, with emphasis on conservation planning and climate change impact on biodiversity. Currently, he is part of an international team researching climate change impact on tropical Andes. Peter C. Boyce is a visiting lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Previously he held a BRT Research Associate post for two years. When not teaching in Penang he is based in Kuching, Sarawak. Awards include a Silver Engler Medal from the International Association of Plant Taxonomists (1996) and the Henry Allan Gleason Award, New York Botanical Gardens (2000). Research interests centre on the Araceae of tropical Asia, Hanguana, speciation dynamics in everwet and perhumid Sunda, and morphological adaptations in specific ecological niches, notably rheophytic plants. Current research foci include taxonomy and systematics of Homalomena, the Schismatoglottideae, and Nephythyrideae, and of Hanguana. Caroline Byrne received her B.A. degree in Natural Sciences and Ph.D. on the Systematics of the Thai Clusiaceae and Hypericaceae at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Following the completion of her Ph.D. in 2009, she was a research assistant at Trinity College on the Interactive Flora of the Burren Project for 6 months. At present, she is preparing and finishing papers for publication. Kongkanda Chayamarit received her B.Sc. in biology at Kasetsart University, as well as her M.Sc. in Botany. She obtained her doctorate in Plant Systematics from the Faculty of Science of the University of Tokyo (Japan). From 1979 to 1984, she was plant taxonomist at the Forest Herbarium in Bangkok, till 2005 she worked there as curator, followed by the position of Director until 2008. In 2009, she became director of the Botanical Garden Organization of Thailand and is, therein, in charge of Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden. She is the production manager and motor behind the Flora of Thailand project. Roland Cochard is Assistant Professor (since 2009) at the Asian Institute of Technology near Bang- kok, Thailand. He received his Bachelor in Environmental Science (with Honours) in 1999 from James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia, and his PhD in 2004 from the Institute of Integrative Biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. During and after his PhD (2000-2005) he conducted research on African savanna vegetation dynamics for ETH and the GTZ. In 2006, he conducted a survey of tsunami affected coastal ecosystems in Thailand and Indonesia (collaboration of ETH, AIT and ZIL), before he was involved in a bird atlas project (in 2007) and served as an advisor (in 2008) to Zurich Financial Services in a Country Risk Assessment Project. He is currently conducting research on biodiversity and conservation, savanna and rainforest vegetation dynamics, invasive species management, ecological restoration, and climate change and sustainability issues. Charlotte Couch is a botanical researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She received a BSc. (Hons) from University of Wales, Aberystwyth and subsequently a MSc in Plant Diversity (Biodiversity and Conservation) from the University of Reading. She has recently worked on conservation assessments for Cyperaceae species from Thailand and on the Interactive Key for Flora Malesiana. Tom Curtis is a plant taxonomist, ecologist and horticulturalist. His doctoral research was on dacty- lorchids in Ireland and Europe, and he has over 36 years field experience in orchids and Ireland’s wild 473 About the Contributors plants. He was co-author of The Irish Red Data Book: 1 Vascular Plants, The Orchids of Ireland and co-editor of Ireland and the Water Framework Directive. He has published extensively on the flora of Ireland and its coastal ecology. He formerly worked in the research branch of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Since 2002, he has worked as an ecological consultant on projects as diverse as the Water Framework Directive, the rare plants and montane flora of County Wicklow and on a fen restoration project with BirdWatch Ireland. Currently, he is a Research Associate of the Botany School, Trinity College, Dublin, Adjunct Lecturer in Botany and Plant Science in the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Chairman of Genetic Heritage Ireland. Soejatmi Dransfield is a plant taxonomist specializing in bamboos, who gained her first degree in Plant Taxonomy from Academy of Agriculture, Ciawi, Bogor, Indonesia. She began her botanical career as a staff member of Herbarium Bogoriense, Indonesia, and gained her PhD from Reading University, UK, in 1975 with her thesis ‘The revision of Cymbopogon (Gramineae)’. After she moved to UK in 1978, she continued her research on bamboo taxonomy including the generic delimitation of the Old World tropical bamboos. She is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, writing the account of bamboos from Malesia, Thailand and Madagascar. Hans-Joachim Esser is Curator and Research Scientist at the herbarium of the Botanische Staats- sammlung München. He received his Diploma and Doctorate in Biology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He was Mercer Fellow at the Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University, USA, in 2000-2002. He worked as Postdoc and Visiting Researcher at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, the Rijksherbarium Leiden, Netherlands, and the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. He worked at the Forest Herbarium Bangkok with a grant of the Thai Biodiversity Research and Training Program (BRT). He has been specializing in Systematic Botany for 20 years. He contributed to various floras of tropical areas of Asia and South America; currently he is member of the Editorial Board of the Flora of Thailand. Gustavo Galindo is currently working for the Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales (Ideam) in Colombia. He received his B.Sc. in Biology from the Universidad de los An- des and has postgraduate studies in GIS and remote sensing from CIAF and the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Gustavo has more than 10 years of experience in spatial analysis in the areas of biodiversity conservation, landscape ecology and ecosystem mapping; he worked for the Instituto de Investigación Alexander von Humboldt (IAvH), for more than 5 years where he received the support to do this research. His work is centered on biomass estimation of tropical forests in the frame of REDD. Alan Grainger is Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, University of Leeds, which he joined in 1992. He has undertaken research into modelling and monitoring tropical deforestation since 1980, gaining his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford for building the world’s first global simulation model of long-term trends in tropical forest

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