Science Panel For The Amazon archived

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. Professor Sachs serves as Professor at Columbia University. He is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and an SDG Advocate for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. From 2001-2018, Sachs served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General (Kofi Annan 2001-2007, Ban Ki-moon 2008-2016, and Antonio Guterres 2017-2018). Professor Sachs is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies to address complex challenges including debt crises, hyperinflations, the transition from central planning to market economies, the control of AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, the escape from extreme poverty and the battle against human-induced climate change. He has received 28 honorary degrees and was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders.

Emma Torres enjoys a long experience in the United Nations, with responsibilities involving management, strategic programme development, and negotiations to promote sustainable development initiatives globally and regionally. She coordinated the strategic initiative A Biodiversity SuperPower, which makes the case for biodiversity’s importance to the development, equity, and long- term competitiveness of the Latin America and Caribbean region. As UNDP coordinator for the Commission on Development and Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean she produced the Our Own Agenda and Amazonia without Myths reports. Both remain a point of reference in the field. Emma holds an MA in Economics from Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain; a Diploma in Language and French Civilization from Sorbonne, Paris; and certificates in Environmental Economics and Climate Change, IIED, at Harvard University.

Carlos Nobre is a Brazilian Earth System scientist with a PhD in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. Nobre’s work mostly focus on the Amazon and its impacts on the Earth system. He chaired the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). He has also been a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was National Secretary for Research and Development Policies at the Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation of Brazil and President of Brazil’s Agency for Post-Graduate Education (CAPES). He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the World Academy of Sciences, and The Royal Society.

Marielos Peña-Claros is a Bolivian researcher with a Ph.D. in Ecology from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Dr. Peña-Claros is Professor at the Forest Ecology and Forest Management group of Wageningen University, where she is working since 2010. Dr. Peña-Claros is specialized in forest ecology, focusing on forest management of tropical forests, with emphasis on ecological research that provides insight to define better management practices. Specifically, Dr. Peña-Claros is interested in looking at the recovery of forests after human disturbances and on silvicultural treatments that speed up the recovery process.

Rebecca N. Abers is an American scientist based in Brazil with a Ph.D in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília, Brazil. Her research focuses on civil society state relations, participatory policy-making, and the role of creative action in policy and institution-building processes. She authored “Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil” (Lynne Rienner, 2000) and “Practical Authority: Agency and institutional change in Brazilian Water Politics” (Oxford, 2013, Margaret E. Keck, co-author), as well as many journal articles and book chapters. She is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política.

Ricardo Abramovay is a Brazilian sociologist. He was a professor at the Department of Economics of University of São Paulo (Brazil) and is currently in the Environmental Science Program at the same university. He is the author of “Beyond the Green Economy” (Routledge, 2016) and “Amazonia. Por uma economia do conhecimento da natureza” Ed. Elefante, São Paulo). His research touches also the socioenvironmental impacts of the digital revolution.

James Albert is an American endowed Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, with a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Michigan. He has more than 30 years of experience in collecting and documenting tropical fish diversity. To date and with his colleagues, Dr. Albert has 133 peer-reviewed publications (GS >5,000 citations, h-index 38) in the areas of Evolutionary Biology, Biogeography, Systematic Ichthyology, Tropical Aquatic Biodiversity, and Conservation Biology. These publications include descriptions of >50 species and 11 genera new to science. Dr. Albert has supervised 11 PhD, six MSc, and 11 undergraduate honors thesis projects, and served on an additional 23 graduate student committees. Dr. Albert serves on the editorial boards of three scientific journals, has been principal investigator on five multi-investigator projects documenting aquatic Amazonian biodiversity, and has edited three books on the diversity and evolution of Amazonian fishes.

Ane Alencar is a Brazilian Geographer with a Master's degree in Remote Sensing and GIS from Boston University and Ph.D. in Forest Resources and Conservation at University of Florida. She is the Science Director at IPAM and part of the coordination of Mapbiomas initiative. For the past 26 years she has coordinated a team dedicated to understand the dynamics of fire, forest degradation and their relationship with land use and climate change, and with conservation policies for Amazon and Cerrado biomes.

Claudio Almeida is a Brazilian senior technologist at the National Institute for Space Research. He graduated in Agronomy from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (1992), with a Master's degree in Remote Sensing from the National Institute for Space Research (2008) and doctorate in Geomatics from the Université de Montpellier - France (2016). Dr. Almeida works with mapping deforestation and land use in tropical forests. Dr. Almeida was Head of the Regional Center of the Amazon between January 2009 and December 2012, when he coordinated the transfer of technology in mapping tropical forests. He acts as Coordinator of the Monitoring Program for the Amazon and Other Biomes, where he is responsible for the PRODES, DETER and TerraClass projects.

Angélica is a Peruvian Researcher at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida (UF). She received her doctorate from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. She is also co-director of the Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab at UF. Her research centers on human-environment interactions. In particular, she looks at resilience, land use and land cover change dynamics in the tropics and its relation to economic activities with an emphasis on sustainable tourism and its role as a development and conservation strategy in the tropics.

Lincoln Alves is a Brazilian climate scientist with a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil, where he is currently a researcher. He is responsible to provide technical and scientific information quality to guide public policies for mitigation and adaptation to regional environmental changes. He has been a consultant for the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, for the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, among others, in the areas of environmental studies of global change, climate modeling, impacts and vulnerability. He is Lead Author of the Atlas of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report.

Diana “Tita” Alvira is a Colombian interdisciplinary ecologist who holds a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary ecology with concentrations in tropical conservation and development and farming systems research and extension from the University of Florida. She is currently the Thriving Futures Director of Legado. She has more than 20 years of experience working implementing community‐centered conservation for well‐being programs, and participatory action research methodologies for conserving the cultural and biological diversity in the Andes Amazon region.

Elizabeth P. Anderson is a conservation ecologist at Florida International University (FIU) with two decades of experience in tropical ecology and conservation, focusing on freshwater systems. She received her A.B. from the Honors Program at the University of Georgia (1998), and her Ph.D. from the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia (2004), now the Odum School of Ecology. Elizabeth had a productive international career before her appointment as Assistant Professor at FIU in 2017. She served as coordinator of multiple international research and study programs, as Conservation Sustainability Director at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA (2008-10), and worked with USAID-supported programs in South America, East Africa and India (2005-07; 2010-13). Between 2013-2016, she served as the Director of International Research Programs in the School of Environment, Arts and Society at FIU. She is a 3-time recipient of the Fulbright award.

Cecilia S. Andreazzi is a senior researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Brazil, with a PhD in Ecology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her interests and experience are focused on the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species interaction networks and infectious disease dynamics. For that, she combines empirical data, mathematical modeling and tools derived from network science. Her research lies at the intersection of community and ecosystem ecology, evolutionary biology, epidemiology and conservation biology. She is particularly interested in understanding the effects of biodiversity loss and environmental disturbance on community structure, ecosystem function and human health across spatial and temporal scales.

Luiz Aragão is a Brazilian Senior Scientist and Leader of the Tropical Ecosystems and Environmental Sciences Laboratory at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology since 2013, with a Ph.D. from the National Institute for Space Research. Since 2018, Dr. Aragão has been the Head of the Remote Sensing Division at INPE. He is also the Scientific Committee President of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Program in Amazonia. In 2008, Dr. Aragão’s original research on tropical forest degradation through fire was recognized by the UK Natural Environment Research Council, when he earned the prestigious NERC Research Fellowship. Dr. Aragão joined, in 2009, the University of Exeter, College of Life and Environmental Sciences as a Senior Lecturer, leading the Landscape and Ecosystem Dynamics Research group until 2012. His contribution to education of future generations of scientists and professionals was recognized through the Most Supportive Member of Staff Teaching Awards from the University of Exeter (2011). Dr. Aragão has contributed extensively with BBC’s programs and other news vehicles, during the 2019 Amazonian deforestation and fire crisis. His scientific contribution has been recognized at several national and international science academies and conventions, such as the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Caroline C. Arantes is a Brazilian Research Associate at the Michigan State University, Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, USA. In this position, Dr. Arantes is working in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team to understand effects of hydropower development on aquatic systems, fish ecology and fisheries in the Amazon and to provide solutions for challenges confronting Food-Energy-Water systems. Dr. Arantes earned her PhD in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences from Texas A&M University (USA), her Masters in Applied Zoology (UESC, Brazil), and Bachelors in Oceanography (UERJ, Brazil). Dr. Arantes has 17 years of experience working with conservation problems in the Amazon. In general, her research examines the ecology and management of fish and fisheries in relation to environmental changes processes affecting freshwater ecosystems, including ecosystem alteration and fishing pressure. Dr. Arantes research applies a range of interdisciplinary approaches with the aim to advancing scientific knowledge that offers solutions to fish and fisheries conservation problems at local, regional and global levels.

Dolors Armenteras is a Colombian biologist with a PhD in geography from King's College London, UK. Currently Dr. Armenteras is a Full Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia where she centers her research on dynamics and drivers of deforestation and fragmentation of Colombian forests, Andes and Amazon, among others. At her lab they focus on how growing human activities affect the old-growth forests and how to preserve and manage tropical landscapes. Dr. Armenteras’ research in ecology, spatial analysis and modelling at landscape scale for biodiversity conservation has helped advance understanding of ecological processes across multiple organizational levels. This experience encompasses both, fauna and flora, and includes ecosystem structure, modelling and landscape processes. Most recently, her focus on monitoring and forecasting has led her to integrate fire ecology by examining how to manage risk reduction in a context of climate change and how understanding fire can help reduce forest degradation and conserve biodiversity. She currently serves as Vice-president of International Association of Landscape Ecology, IALE.

Paulo Artaxo is a Brazilian expert in the links between Amazonia and climate change, with a Ph.D. in Environmental Physics from the University of São Paulo. Dr. Artaxo has dedicated 40 years studying the effects of deforestation on carbon and hydrological cycles and in the functioning of the Amazonian ecosystem. He worked at NASA, Lund, Stockholm and Harvard Universities. Prof. Artaxo published more than 400 papers, 26 of them in the Science and Nature group. He is one of the most cited Brazilian researchers with an h-index of Google Scholar of 104, and 81 in the Web of Science. Vice director of the São Paulo Academy of Science, and member of the The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change' (IPCC) being one of the leading authors from AR4, AR5 and AR6 and in the IPCc Land and climate special report. He is the coordinator of the FAPESP Climate Change Program.

Eduardo D. Assad is a Brazilian researcher, graduated in Rural engineering in 1979 at the Federal University of Viçosa. He had his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from 1982 to 1987 at the hydrology laboratory of the University of Montpellier II, France. From 1993 to 2006 he was the technical and scientific coordinator of the National Agricultural Climate Risks Zoning of the Ministry of Agriculture, head of the National Network of Climate Change and the Agriculture Team in the Science and Technology Ministry, and coordinator of the Vulnerability Impacts group, in the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change. Nowadays, he coordinates several Brazilian projects in the area of climate change and its impacts on agriculture. He is currently a researcher at Embrapa, scientific coordinator of the National Inventory of Greenhouse Gases of the Ministry of Science and Technology, professor of agribusiness at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, member of Low Carbon Agriculture Observatory since 2013 and coordinator of the sub-program Food Security of Food National Institute of Science and Technology- Climate Changes.

Simone Athayde is a Brazilian Associate Professor at Florida International University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies and the Kimberly Green Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Dr. Athayde holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida. Dr. Athayde’s mission is to achieve excellence in the science-policy interface, as well as in science education and communication, towards reconciling social justice, biodiversity conservation and development, locally and globally. As an environmental anthropologist and interdisciplinary ecologist, her research examines the impacts of large infrastructure projects and climate change on indigenous peoples and local communities across the Amazon. Dr. Athayde has worked across the Amazonian region for over 20 years, supporting indigenous peoples and local communities’ self-determination, sustainable livelihoods, and territorial rights.

Tasso Azevedo coordinates the SEEG Network, a System to Estimate GHG Emissions in Brazil, Peru and India, as well as MAPBIOMAS a platform to produce historical annual land cover and land use maps of Brazil, Amazon Basin and other regions through a multi-institutional collaboration. He is a forestry engineer graduate at University of São Paulo and was founder and director of the Institute of Forest and Agriculture Management and Certification (IMAFLORA). Tasso was Director of the National Forest Program at the Ministry of Environment and general-secretary of the National Forest Commission. He was the first Chief & Director General of the Brazilian Forest Service and one of the key people involved in the design and implementation of the National Plan to Combat Deforestation and the Amazon Fund. Tasso serves as board member on several organizations including the Business Forum on Climate Change, Rainforest Alliance, NEPCon, Imazon, Imaflora and IEMA and teaches at pos-graduate programs on sustainability related issues and is columnist at O Globo newspaper and Epoca Negocios magazine. In 2013 he received the Bright Award, Stanford University's Global Sustainability Award, was a in TED Global in 2014 and was a climate and forest consultant for the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Nasceu na comunidade de Tucumã-Rupitã, no alto Içana (AM). Logo em seguida, a família mudou-se para a comunidade de Ipadu Ponta, no Rio Negro (próxima à cidade de São Gabriel da Cachoeira), onde permaneceu até meados da década de 1980, quando a comunidade se desfez. De volta a Tucumã, em 1987 André foi estudar em Manaus, onde freqüentou como aluno, até o final de 1991, a Escola Agrícola Rainha dos Apóstolos, dirigida por um ex-padre católico. Novamente em Tucumã, assumiu a função de professor na sua comunidade de origem, como funcionário da prefeitura. Em meados de 1992, foi eleito segundo tesoureiro na fundação da Organização Indígena da Bacia do Içana (Oibi). Em 1996, André foi eleito presidente da Oibi, e reeleito duas vezes, em 2000 e 2004. Foi bolsista da Fundação Ashoka (2001 a 2003) e, desde janeiro de 2005, é vice-presidente da Federação das Organizações Indígenas do Rio Negro (Foirn), com sede na cidade de São Gabriel da Cachoeira, onde mora atualmente com a esposa e cinco filhos. Os Baniwa são hoje mais de 12 mil, e vivem em mais de 200 comunidades situadas na região limítrofe entre Brasil, Colômbia e Venezuela. Born in the community of Tucumã-Rupitã, in the upper Içana (AM), Andre worked as a teacher in his home community. Since January 2005, he has been vice-president of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn).

Jos Barlow is the UK principal investigator of NERC-FAPESP funded consortia, a co-founder of The Sustainable Amazon Network (Rede Amazonia Sustentavel) which has produced over 60 papers and policy briefs on human-modified Amazonian landscapes, Executive Editor of Journal of Applied Ecology, Trustee of WWF-UK, and Professor at the University of Lancaster and member of the teaching faculty at the Federal University of Pará, Brazil.

Luana S. Basso is a Brazilian biologist and PhD in Sciences with emphasis on climate change and carbon cycle by the University of São Paulo (USP). She is currently pursuing her second Post-Doctorate at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). She has over ten years of experience in tropical forest carbon balance, focused on understanding the role of the Amazon in the emission/absorption of greenhouse gases. Her current research activities involve determine the Amazon methane and carbon balance in a period during which the forest is likely to experience a warming and increasingly variable climate, as well as increasing direct human pressure.

Aoife Bennett is an Irish political ecologist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. He currently works as a Research Scholar at the Institute of Peruvian Studies in Peru.

Luis Donisete Benzi Grupioni is a Brazilian anthropologist with a PhD in Anthropology from the University of São Paulo (Brazil). He is the executive coordinator of the Institute for Indigenous Research and Capacity Building - Iepé, and executive secretary of the Amazonian Cooperation Network - RCA. Luis Donisete was associate professor at the State University of Mato Grosso (Unemat) and at the University of São Paulo. He also advised the Brazilian Ministry of Education for the creation of the national policy on Indigenous education.

Erika Berenguer is a Brazilian Senior Researcher Associate at the University of Oxford and Lancaster University. Originally from Brazil, she moved to the United Kingdom to pursue her Ph.D. degree on the degradation of Amazonian forests from Lancaster University. Specifically, she addresses the effects of different types of anthropogenic disturbance on carbon stocks and plant diversity in the Brazilian Amazon. Dr. Berenguer has more than 50 publications on tropical deforestation and its consequences on biodiversity, including recent scientific contributions to the prestigious scientific journals Science and Nature. Dr. Berenguer is also one of the coordinators of the Rede Amazônia Sustentável, a large research network focusing on human-modified landscapes.

Carla Jaimes Betancourt is a Bolivian researcher, with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Bonn lecturer at the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn (Germany). In 2017, Carla has been president of the International Meeting of Amazonian Archaeology in Trinidad, Bolivia. Her research focuses on complex societies of the southwest Amazon, expansion and ethnogenesis processes, and heritage. Since 1999 Carla has been investigating monumental sites in the 'Llanos de Moxos', Bolivia. She also has experience with archaeological materials from the Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon that provide her with a regional view through time and space.

Laura Borma is a Brazilian Researcher at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil. Dr. Borma graduated in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Ouro Preto and holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Dr. Borma is an expert in ecohydrology, soil physics and soil-plant-atmosphere interaction and their role in the prospects of climate change, land use-land cover changes, and climatic extreme events. Member at the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Project (LBA), she coordinated projects funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP on the role of the ecosystem services on the spatial and temporal rainfall distribution in the Amazon. She published papers, books and book chapters with emphasis on Hydrology and Ecohydrology of Amazon ecosystems. Dr. Borma is also Coordinator of the Laboratory of Ecohydrology at the Earth System Science Centre (LabEcoh CCST/INPE).

André B. Junqueira is a Brazilian ecologist with a PhD from the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands, and is currently based at the Institut de Ciència I Tecnologia Ambientals of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is interested in interdisciplinary research on ethnoecology and historical ecology. André has been doing research in Amazonia since 2006, exploring synergies between local and scientific knowledge to understand past, current and future patterns in socio-ecological systems.

Pedro H. S. Brancalion is a Brazilian scientist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo with expertise in ecosystem restoration. He is currently a professor of tropical forestry and restoration ecology at the “Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo. He is also vice-coordinator of the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact and affiliated member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

Paulo Brando is a Brazilian researcher with a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the Florida University and who currently works at Yale University. Dr. Brando’s research explores the vulnerability of terrestrial ecosystems to repeated disturbances and prolonged degradation caused by human activities and extreme climate events. He aims to inform the general public and policy makers about the potential negative influences of climate and land use change on tropical ecosystems. His research combines field manipulation experiments, statistical and dynamic vegetation models, and remote sensing.

Mercedes Bustamante is a Brazilian scientist with a Ph.D. in Geobotany from the Universität Trier in Germany. She is a professor at University of Brasília in Brazil, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. She has coordinated chapters of the 5th Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of the 1st Regional Assessment for the Americas of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). She was a member of the Scientific Committee for reviewing the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) nitrous oxide report, Latin America representative in the International Nitrogen Initiative, member of the Scientific Committee of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) and of the Biosphere-Atmosphere Program in the Amazon (LBA). She was General Coordinator of Ecosystem Management and Director of Policies and Thematic Programs in the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and Director of Brazilian Programs and Scholarships in the Coordination of Personnel Development (CAPES).

Paulette Bynoe is a Guyanese scientist with a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Sussex, England. She is a Senior Lecturer and the Deputy Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Guyana. She has 25 years of professional accomplishments as an interdisciplinary trained Environmental Specialist, and teaches different courses to postgraduate students in community disaster risk management, environmental impact assessment, environmental research methods, and environmental resources policy. In 2015, Paulette received the Golden Arrow of Achievement Award for environmental education, awareness and training and for research contribution to natural resource/environment policy making, by His Excellency, The President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.

Patrick Caron is a French geography researcher and specialist on food systems. He holds a Ph.D. in development geography from the Paris Ouest University and was CIRAD Director- General from 2010 to 2016. Currently he is Vice-President of the University of Montpellier, President of Agropolis International, and member of many institutional bodies. He chaired the High Level Panel of Experts of the UN Committee on World Food Security (HLPE/CFS) from 2015 to 2019. Dr. Caron is a member of the French Academies of Agriculture and Technology. He is co-chairing the IV Conference on Global Food Security in 2020 in Montpellier, France, and is a member of the Scientific Committee of the UN Summit on Food Systems (2021).

Juan Carrillo is a Colombian paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, he has a bachelor in Biology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a Master’s in Paleontology and a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology both from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. In the past, Juan has worked as a researcher in the Smithsonian in Panama, and at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. In 2019, he obtained the Colombian National Award on Natural Sciences from the Alejandro Angel Escobar Foundation. Juan has studied the past diversity of the tropics, using the fossil record for more than 10 years.

Ana Euler is a Brazilian forestry engineer who holds a Ph.D. in Environmental and Forestry Sciences from the Graduate School of Environment and Information Science - Yokohama National University, Japan. She has been working in the Amazon for the last 20 years, as project officer, public manager and researcher at Embrapa Amapá.

Patrick Chesney is a Guyanese scientist with a Ph.D. in Agroforestry from Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Costa Rica. He has spearheaded the Guiana Shield Facility (GSF) for the promotion and delivery of support to the conservation and sustainable development of the Guiana Shield ecoregion. GSF’s work has been recognized by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the European Parliament and the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). Dr. Chesney has more than 28 years of scientific and technical leadership experience working in the fields of agriculture, biodiversity conservation, environment and sustainable development. He is a part-time Lecturer at the University of Guyana, and a reviewer for the Agroforestry Science journal.

Dr. Michael Coe is an American earth system scientist who holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He is a senior scientist and director of the tropics program at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

Sandra Bibiana Correa brings her expertise on riverine and fish ecology to the Science Panel for the Amazon. She earned a Ph.D. degree from Texas A&M University and a M.S. degree from the University of Florida. She is an Assistant Professor of Aquatic Ecology at the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Aquaculture, Mississippi State University, USA. Her research focuses on understanding the roles of temporal, spatial, and structural environmental heterogeneity on the maintenance of biodiversity and fisheries productivity in large rivers. Drawing on her experience working in the Amazon, Pantanal, and Southeastern USA, she seeks to explore the value of floodplain forests for aquatic biodiversity and fisheries productivity in the Amazon and globally. Findings from her research support floodplain restoration and climate change resilience initiatives.

Francisco Cuesta is an Ecuadorian scientist with a Ph.D. in Tropical Ecology from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is currently a senior researcher at the Universidad de las Américas (UDLA), Ecuador, where he directs several research projects focused on studying the relationship of functional diversity in the productivity of tropical mountain ecosystems. Dr. Cuesta directs five master's theses, co-directs three doctoral dissertations from the Universities of Texas at Austin (USA), Wageningen (The Netherlands) and Diken University (Australia). His research is aimed at understanding the effects of climate change and land-use dynamics on the ecosystems of the Andes. He is the scientific director of the GLORIA-Andes Network.

Nicolás Cuvi is an Ecuadorian biologist with a Master in Science Communication, and a Ph.D. in History of Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He is currently a Professor at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO Sede Ecuador), where he teaches Ecology, Urban Ecology, Anthropology and the environment, Science and Power, and also does research in Environmental History. Nicolás is Lead Author in one of the chapters of the 6th Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has received the Isabel Tobar Guarderas Award for best Social Sciences production between 2016 and 2017, the Jorge Mantilla Ortega Award in 2012, and the Prisma Casa de las Ciencias Award in 2006. He was Research Director at the Science Interactive Museum of Quito, and Director of Letras Verdes. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Socioambientales. He also dedicates time to agroecology and beekeeping.

Liliana Dávalos is a Colombian scientist with a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology from Columbia University, United States. She is a professor of Conservation Biology at Stony Brook University’s Department of Ecology and Evolution. She leads the Tropical Biology group, which studies extinction and survival in deep time, functional genetics in non-model mammals, and deforestation. Among other topics, her lab examines the connections between policies, tropical forest loss, and the growth of agricultural commodities including the illegal coca crop (the raw material to produce cocaine). Her research also involves the range of activities with the greatest impact on the largest number of species to plan and implement conservation, and thereby shape policies for a biologically sustainable future.

Francisco de Assis Costa is a Brazilian economist with a PhD in Economics from Freie Universität-Berlin (1988), Germany. He is a Full Professor at the Federal University of Pará, in Center for Higher Amazon Studies (NAEA) and in the Post-Graduate Program in Economics. Research productivity fellow at CNPq until 2020, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Brazilian Studies (CBS) at Oxford University (2007). Francisco was Director of the of Regional, Urban and Environmental Studies at IPEA in 2011 and 2012.

Carolina R.C. Doria is a Brazilian biologist with a Ph.D. degree in Socio-environmental Science from Pará Federal University (Brazil). She has been a professor at the Rondônia Federal University Biology Department since 1998, coordinating the Ichthyology and Fisheries Laboratory and the Fish Collection. She is also a member of the Ação Ecológica Guaporé (ONG) and the International Research Network on Amazonian Dams. For 20 years, she has worked with environmental conservation and development on the Amazon. Her research interests include ichthyology and fisheries, community-based management of natural resources, dams ‘impacts, citizen science, governance and resilience of socio-ecological systems in the Amazon.

Amy Duchelle is an American Climate Change Team Leader & Senior Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia. She leads CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+, which engages a dynamic network of research partners and stakeholders to produce information, analysis and tools to support tropical forest conservation and sustainable development. Amy was featured as one of “16 Women Restoring the Earth” by the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) for International Women’s Day 2020. Before moving to Indonesia in 2015, Amy lived in Brazil for many years and has worked in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

Fabrice Duponchelle is a French scientist with a Ph.D. in biological oceanography from the University Paris 6 – University of Bretagne Occidentale (UBO), France. During his postdoctoral period, he was the Senior Ecologist/Conservation Planner of the Lake Malawi Biodiversity Conservation Project of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). He is a researcher at the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and member of the International Mixt Laboratory EDIA (Evolution and Domestication of the Amazonian Ichthyofauna). His research interests focus on fish ecology, evolution and conservation and in particular on the evolution of fish life history strategies in relation to natural and anthropogenic environmental constraints.

Ana María Duran Calisto is an Ecuadorian architect, urban and environmental planner, researcher, academic advisor, and writer. She is a doctoral candidate at UCLA, working on a dissertation on the history of urbanization of Amazonia. In 2010, she received a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University in order to develop an open research network devoted to investigate the impacts of continental infrastructures, particularly bi-oceanic corridors, in South America. In 2002, she co-founded the design firm Estudio A0, which has received national and international awards. Her essays have been published in numerous books and magazines. She currently teaches at Yale Architecture School.

Andrea C. Encalada is an Ecuadorian Professor at San Francisco de Quito University, Director of the Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, and Co-director of the BIOSFERA Research Institute. Dr. Encalada is also an adjunct Professor of the Geography Department of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Dr. Encalada holds a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University, USA, and worked as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is also a member of the Ecuadorian Academy of Sciences and board member of Jocoto Conservation Foundation. Dr. Encalada’s research is focused mainly on the ecology of tropical rivers, and has a special interest in population, community and ecosystem responses of lotic ecosystems to climate change, and the development and application of bioindicators of pollution and other anthropogenic disturbances in tropical rivers. Currently she is part of the Andean-Amazon Free Flowing Rivers initiative and also a member of the Amazon Citizen Science group.

Andres Escobar is a Colombian researcher, currently pursuing his PhD at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen. He has a master's degree in business administration from the University of Antioquia in Colombia, and on conflict research and management from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy in Erfurt. He is a research assistant at the Chair of International Relations and Transnational Politics at the University of Leipzig. His research interests are rural development, land distribution, poverty, peace-building and conflict.

Jhan Carlo Espinoza is a Peruvian researcher with a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the Pierre et Marie Curie University of Paris, France. Currently, he is a researcher at the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), with experience in research activities in Peru, France, Argentina and Brazil. In 2015, Jhan Carlo was nominated for the Peruvian state to the Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education, in the theme Disaster Risk Reduction. He was one of authors of IPCC-SRCCL 2019 and he is currently General Coordinator of the Amazon-Andes Connectivity project (AMANECER) of Make Our Planet Great Again program of the French government.

Adriane Esquivel Muelbert is a Brazilian ecologist aiming to understand the effect of current anthropogenic-related environmental changes on biological systems. Dr. Esquivel-Muelbert started to work in the Amazon during her PhD, when she visited the region for the first time. Since then, Dr. Esquivel-Muelbert has been in love with Amazonia. She investigates how forests respond to different forces and what the implications of these responses are on biodiversity and global biogeochemical cycles. Her work uses field-based data to investigate forest dynamics at a macroecological scale. Dr. Esquivel-Muelbert is passionate about tropical forests and their complexity, particularly the Amazon, and she seeks to translate her research into conservation efforts. Adriane was born in Panamá and grew up in Brazil with the Atlantic Forest very close to home, which inspired her to become a Tropical Ecologist.

Philip M. Fearnside is an American biologist at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil since 1978. He holds a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Michigan with over 700 publications and membership in the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He was identified in 2006 as the world’s 2nd most-cited scientist on global warming, in 2011 as the 7th most cited on sustainable development, and in 2021 as “most influential” in Brazil on climate change.

Joice Ferreira is a Brazilian Ecologist who has been working in the Eastern Amazon for the last 16 years as a researcher at EMBRAPA. Joice is interested in contributing to solutions for the complex socioecological problems linked to agricultural expansion and forest management in the Amazon. In 2019, Joice was awarded with the British Ecological Society Ecological Engagement Award. She is currently developing research relating land-uses, forest degradation, fires and forest regeneration with the provision of ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and the well-being of rural communities.

Matthew Finer is an American Research Specialist at Amazon Conservation. After getting his doctorate from the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University in 2003, Dr. Finer has been focused on Amazon conservation issues. Most notably, he joined the organization Amazon Conservation in 2013 and led the creation of MAAP (Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project). MAAP specializes in advancing the dynamic new field of satellite-based real-time deforestation monitoring. Since 2013, Finer has published over 120 high-impact reports on the MAAP portal regarding the major deforestation cases, trends, drivers, and patterns of the day. Most recently, Dr. Finer has been helping develop new satellite-based techniques to monitor Amazon fires and degradation (illegal logging), in real-time as well.

Suzette Flantua is a Dutch researcher at the University of Bergen, Norway, with a Ph.D. on climate dynamics from the University of Amsterdam. Dr. Flantua’s main research interest is to understand what determines biodiversity in and around mountain regions by studying the impact of climate dynamics at various time scales (past, present, future). Dr. Flantua is particularly interested in the way historical environmental factors (climate and geology) and humans influenced contemporary biodiversity patterns. She uses a biogeographical and palaeoecological approach, taking advantage of recent developments in landscape modelling (GIS) and palaeoecological data availability. Most of her work has dealt with the tropics where Dr. Flantua has also organized and participated in numerous field expeditions of the Northern and Central Andes, and savanna lowlands.

Bernardo Flores is a Brazilian researcher at the University of Campinas (Brazil). Dr. Flores defended his Ph.D. Double Degree in 2016, at Wageningen University (NL) and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (BRA), and his M.Sc. in 2011 at the National Research for Amazonian Research (Brazil). From 2017 through 2020, Dr. Flores was a postdoc at University of Campinas (Brazil). His research focuses on tropical vegetation dynamics, connecting broad to local scales, using remote sensing, field data and experimental approaches. Dr. Flores has spent most of his time investigating the impacts of wildfire disturbances in the Amazon forest and how these perturbations may cause forest collapse and the shift to a savanna or degraded ecosystem state. In applying the theory of dynamical systems to tropical terrestrial ecosystems, Dr. Flores often addresses feedback mechanisms and the resilience of alternative stable states.

Sandra Maria Fonseca da Costa is a Brazilian Geographer who holds a Ph.D. in Space Information from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo and the University of New South Wales (1995).

Roosevelt García-Villacorta is a Peruvian tropical ecologist of Amazonian ecosystems with a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. He is currently the Scientific Director of the Ecosystem Restoration Program at the Center for Amazon Scientific Innovation.

Rachael Garrett is an American researcher at the ETH Zurich University (Switzerland). Dr. Garrett's research examines interactions between land use, ecosystem services, and economic development at multiple spatial and temporal scales to better understand the drivers and impacts of land change and the effectiveness of existing conservation policies and practices. She is particularly interested in how commodity supply chains interact with environmental institutions to shape land use processes, resource distribution, and trade. Her research has largely focused on land change processes in agriculture-​forest frontiers and sustainable intensification of pastures in the tropics. More broadly she is interested in solutions to achieve zero-​deforestation and zero forest degradation globally, while scaling up more sustainable land use practices and restoration of degraded ecosystems.

Luciana V. Gatti is a Brazilian Climate Change researcher at the National Institute for Space Research, INPE, (Brazil), with a Ph.D. in Science from the Sao Carlos Federal University. Dr. Gatti is a Researcher 1D with the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development productivity grant, and LaGEE Coordinator (Greenhouse Gas Laboratory) at CCST|INPE - Earth System Science Center. She has participated in Amazon studies since 1999, in collaboration with groups from NOAA, and universities of Colorado, Leeds, Wageningen, Leicester, and several other European and American universities, as well as conducted studies using vertical profiles with small aircrafts to study Carbon flux from several Amazon regions. Dr. Gatti is currently completing a decade studying Amazon Carbon Balance, where the main objective is to understand the Interannual variation of Amazon Basin greenhouse gas balances and their controls in a warming and increasingly variable climate.

Juan Manuel Guayasamin is an Ecuadorian Professor at the San Francisco de Quito University (USFQ). He obtained his Master’s and PhD degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Kansas under the supervision of Dr. Linda Trueb. Dr. Guayasamin is also co-director of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Biology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), and a member of the Ecuadorian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Guayasamin has published more than 90 scientific papers on evolution, systematics, ecology, biogeography, and conservation of Neotropical animals, mainly amphibians.

Anna Guiteras Mombiola is a Spanish postdoctoral researcher at Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Barcelona. In 2014–2016 Dr. Guiteras Mombiola was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Cologne (Germany), and in 2018 was adjunct lecturer at the University of Barcelona. Her research focuses on the colonization of the Bolivian Amazon, the changes that occurred in native societies perceived as civilized due to their insertion into the new liberal and republican order, the educational projects designed to promote the incorporation of certain ethnic groups into national society, and the asymmetrical relationship emerged within societies that were under a mission regime in the Colonial era and the reproduction and adaptation of indigenous categorizations in the Republican times.

Sandra Hacon is a Brazilian biologist with a Ph.D. in Environmental geochemistry from Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil. She serves at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil, and works on Environmental Health focused on Health Impact Assessment of large capital projects in Brazil, including environmental and health policy impacts on human health, caused by exposure to air pollution from forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon and by artisanal small-scale gold mining. Dr. Hacon is coordinator of the Climate and Health project established by Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change, Brazil’s representative in the work group of United Nations Environment Program to the Monitoring Program of the Stockholm Convention Implementation, and member of Fiocruz partnership with the Pan American Health Organization.

Susanna Hecht is an American Professor with affiliations to UCLA, Luskin School of Public Policy, and Graduate Institute for Development Studies, Geneva. Dr. Hecht was born in Utah, USA, and earned her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, on soils impacts of forest conversion to pasture in Amazonia. Dr. Hecht has worked in eastern Amazonia on livestock, non-timber forest products and Terra Preta soils and indigenous knowledge; on the expansion of soy in Brazil and Bolivia, on clandestine economies in Colombia, and a more general set of studies on Amazonian development, environmental history and humanized landscapes of the tropics. She has also worked on the forest transition, the dynamics of tropical urban/rural livelihoods and the political ecology of tropical land use change, and in central America and Mexico on remittances and forest resurgence.

Marcos Heil Costa is a Brazilian engineer with extensive experience in climate, land use, carbon cycle, water and agriculture in Central Brazil and the Amazon. Dr. Heil Costa holds a Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and is currently a Professor at the Federal University of Viçosa and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2011, Dr. Costa was appointed Coordinator on Climate Change at the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology. He received the "Antônio Secundino de São José Award", granted by the State of Minas Gerais in 2018, the "PH Rolfs Gold Medal for Merit in Research", awarded by the Federal University of Viçosa in 2015, and the "Arthur Bernardes Award for Research Recognition", granted by the Foundation Arthur Bernardes in 2014.

Sebastian Heilpern was born in Woodstock, NY, to two Argentine immigrants, grew up in Buenos Aires and moved to Brooklyn as a teenager. After completing his undergraduate degree in 2011, Dr. Heilpern worked as a Program Officer for the Wildlife Conservation Society and, since then, he has been consultant on issues related to freshwater conservation in the Amazon. In 2015 Sebastian received a M.S. from the University of Chicago, where he researched the role of large wood piles on ecosystem processes in the Manu River, in Southern Peru. In 2020, Dr. Heilpern completed his Ph.D. at Columbia in Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, focusing on the intersection between changing fish biodiversity, fisheries and food security in the Amazon. Dr. Heilpern recently joined Cornell University as a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, where he continues to integrate across ecology, fisheries, public health and sustainability research.

Martín von Hildebrand is responsible for one of the most pragmatic examples worldwide of tropical forest conservation based on the strengthening of indigenous rights. Martín’s professional and academic background – including a Doctorate in Ethnology from the Sorbonne, Paris - has led him into Government positions, including Director of the Government office for Indigenous Affairs, Presidential advisor on indigenous matters, and Secretary of Borders. He played a key role in the recognition of indigenous territorial rights in the Colombian Amazon, in securing indigenous rights within the 1991 Political Constitution, and in Colombia’s ratification of the International Convention on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ILO Convention 169). He is the founding Director of Gaia Amazonas; and the vision and coordinator behind the successful COAMA (Consolidation of the Amazon) programme. Martin has concentrated his last years work in setting the foundations of the Andes, Amazon, Atlantic Corridor Initiative, which aims to safeguard the ecosystem connectivity and the environmental services in the northern region of the Amazon as a concrete solution to tackle climate change.

Marina Hirota is a Brazilian Assistant Professor of Meteorology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Dr. Hirota has built up her academic career through a very interdisciplinary background with a Bachelor degree in Applied Mathematics, a M.Sc. in Computer Engineering, a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and postdoc studies with theoretical ecologists. Such variety defined Dr. Hirota’s current research field in Earth System Sciences, more specifically, trying to understand the processes and interactions involved in biome shifts within tropical zones of the planet, using dynamical system concepts such as resilience, tipping points and hysteresis. Dr. Hirota is particularly focused on searching for multi-scale and synergistic mechanisms within the atmosphere and the biosphere to deepen, quantitatively and qualitatively, the scientific basis of tipping points in South American tropical ecosystems.

Carina Hoorn is a geologist/paleoecologist and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). She holds an M.Sc. (1988) and Ph.D. (1994) from this university, and an M.Sc. (2003) in Science Communication from Imperial College London (UK). Her main research interest is the Cenozoic evolution of biota and sedimentary environments in mountains and peripheral regions. The regions she is most interested are Amazonia, the Andes, Tibet, the Himalayas and SE Asia.

Denise Humphreys Bebbington, a US citizen, is Research Associate Professor in the Department of International Development, Community and Environment at Clark University in Massachusetts, USA. She holds a Ph.D. in development studies from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Her research has explored the political ecology of natural gas in Bolivia and the implications of the gas economy for both indigenous peoples and regional societies, and the dynamics of socio environmental conflict and mobilization linked to natural resource extraction and large-scale infrastructure investments. More recently she co-led a global scoping study on Extractive Industries, Infrastructure Development, Forest Loss and Forest Community Rights for the Climate and Land Use Alliance in Amazonia, Central America, Mexico and Indonesia.

Catarina C. Jakovac is a Brazilian tropical forest ecologist with a Ph.D. in Production Ecology and Resource Conservation from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Dr. Jakovac is interested in secondary succession and ecological restoration, and her research focuses on understanding the drivers of variation in regrowth rates, diversity and species composition of secondary forests in the tropics, with special interest in the Amazon basin. Among the several factors that affect regrowth, Dr. Jakovac has focused more on the effects of land use history, soil properties and landscape composition. Aiming to have a broad understanding of the socio-ecological systems where secondary forests are included, she has also examined social aspects related to land use change and used remote sensing methods to retrieve land use history and understand patterns of regrowth at the landscape level.

Dr. Christopher Jarrett is an American cultural anthropologist, currently working at the Field Museum. Dr. Jarrett holds a Ph.D. from The University of Texas at San Antonio (2019). His research focuses on Indigenous Amazonian livelihoods and sustainable supply chains based on native Amazonian species.

Clinton N. Jenkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment and part of the Institute for Brazilian Studies of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. Dr. Jenkins received a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Tennessee in 2002. His program focuses on the conservation of biological diversity and efforts to reduce the loss of tropical species and ecosystems. Dr. Jenkins specializes in combining spatial modelling of biodiversity with analysis of conservation policy, with the aim to direct conservation efforts toward specific places to save biodiversity most efficiently. Dr. Jenkins has substantial experience in applied conservation as he previously spent seven years at a Brazilian conservation non-profit. He also runs the BiodiversityMapping.org site for dissemination of data on global biodiversity.

Juan Carlos Jimenez is a Spanish Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Physics & Thermodynamics, and a senior researcher at the Global Change Unit of the Image Processing Laboratory in University of Valencia, Spain. Dr. Jimenez’s research focuses on thermal infrared remote sensing using Earth Observation satellites, with particular emphasis on the development of algorithms for Land Surface Temperature retrieval. His recent research efforts are primarily focused on using remote sensing and reanalysis data to analyze temperature trends and drought patterns over the Amazon forest driven by climatic factors such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or sea surface temperature anomalies over other oceanic regions.

Carmen Josse is an Ecuadorian scientist with a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences with specialization in vegetation ecology from the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Dr. Josse is the Scientific Director of EcoCiencia Foundation since 2016, and Executive Director since March 2020. Dr. Josse also participates in the development of products of the Amazon Network of Geo-referenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) and coordinates a 5-year Amazon regional project on climate change in which RAISG, Woods Hole Research Center, Environmental Defense Fund, and COICA are consortium partners. She was Regional Ecologist for Latin America and the Caribbean at NatureServe from 2001 to 2016, and developer of methods and products of classification, mapping and evaluation of ecosystems throughout Latin America to support conservation planning with NatureServe. Dr. Josse also has a wide experience with geo-referenced tools for evaluating ecosystem integrity, quantitative threat analysis, and monitoring.

David Kaimowitz is an American scientist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently the Chief Program Officer at International Land & Forest Tenure Facility.

Michelle Kalamandeen is a Guyanese postdoctoral researcher in Remote Sensing at the University of Cambridge (UK) and Laurentian University (Canada). She received her PhD in Geography (Ecology and Global Change) from the University of Leeds and her MSc from University of Oxford. Dr. Kalamandeen was a lead scientist on the Government of Guyana’s delegation to UNCCC COP 21 due to her knowledge and work in the Amazon, especially with local and indigenous communities. Michelle was the former Protected Areas Manager of Guyana Marine Conservation Society and former Coordinating Secretary on UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Reserve National Committee. Dr. Kalamandeen has been an executive board member of the Guyana Human Rights Association since 2009.

Jürgen Kesselmeier is a retired German scientist, former Senior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany, and Botany Professor at the Botanical Institute, University of Mainz, Germany. He holds a Ph.D. in natural sciences from the University of Cologne. Dr. Kesselmeier’s research focuses on atmosphere-biosphere interactions, biogenic trace gases, botany, plant physiology, and tropical forests, with investigations covering terrestrial as well as marine biota as sources or sinks of climatically relevant atmospheric compounds. Dr. Kesselmeier counts with more than 170 scientific publications, and has been the Launching and Chief Editor of Biogeosciences Journal and Editor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Journals, as well as appointed German Project Coordinator of the “Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO)” project in 2017.

David Lapola is a Brazilian research scientist from the Center for Meteorological and Climatic Research Applied to Agriculture at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. His scientific background includes a B.Sc. in Ecology (São Paulo State University), a M.Sc. in Meteorology (Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research) and a Ph.D. in Earth System Modeling (Max Planck Institute for Meteorology). Dr. Lapola is interested in researching the impacts of climate change on the Amazon forest and its human populations in urban and rural areas. In that line of research, he coordinates the AmazonFACE – Free-Air CO2 fertilization effect experiment in the Amazon forest. Dr. Lapola is also interested in processes of adaptation to climate change, namely ecosystem-based adaptation, as well as a cultural approximation of Brazil’s population with its forests, through science.

Carlos Larrea is an Ecuadorian scientist with a PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University and a post-doctoral degree from Harvard University. He is currently professor at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar and was a technical adviser of the Yasuni- ITT Initiative in Ecuador, and a consultant for institutions such as UNDP, UNICEF, PAHO, ILO, UICN, World Bank and IDB. He has published about 15 books and 100 articles, and his current research interests are sustainability and human development in Ecuador and Latin America.

Daniel Larrea is a Bolivian researcher, with a Ph.D. in Tropical Ecology from the Los Andes University, Venezuela. Dr. Larrea is the Coordinator of the Sustainable Management Program at the Asociación Boliviana para la Investigación y Conservación de Ecosistemas Andino Amazónicos (ACEAA Amazon Conservation), Interim Professor at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) and Associate Researcher at the Herbario Nacional de Bolivia (Bolivian National Herbarium) (LPB). Daniel has also worked for the Contraloría General de la República and at Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN). He has published more than thirty scientific articles and at least fifteen technical reports related to the ecology of plant communities and management of key natural resources in Bolivia.

Alexander Lees is a British ornithologist with a PhD from the University of East Anglia. Alexander is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and a research associate of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, USA. He has been working on Amazonian conservation issues for 18 years, starting with his PhD in the UK before moving to Brazil for five years to work at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, where he became one of the co-investigators of the Rede Amazônia Sustentável.

Zulema Lehm is a Bolivian sociologist, with a Master's degree in Amazonian Studies from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences - Ecuadorian Branch (FLACSO). Zulema has more than thirty years of work with indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon, articulating research with the design and support of strategic actions implementation for territorial management, conservation and a gender approach. Zulema is a facilitator of gender policies and action plans for National WCS Programmes in Bolivia and Peru, and also contributes to WCS' Andes Amazonia Orinoquia Program with the systematization of the working experiences with local communities while providing support, in social aspects, to the technical teams of the national programs working in the field.

Andres G. (Willy) Lescano is a Peruvian researcher with a Ph.D. in International Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA. Dr. Lescano has studied emerging diseases in the Americas for nearly three decades. He is now focused on the impact of climate and anthropogenic change, with an important emphasis in the Amazon Basin. In 2015 Dr. Lescano founded Emerge, Cayetano University’s Emerging Diseases and Climate Change Unit, and in 2020 his work expanded into Clima, the Latin American Center of Excellence for Climate Change and Health, that he leads. Clima hosts the Latin American center of the Lancet Countdown for Climate Change and is a critical regional platform to address the challenge of climate change by conducting research, science dissemination and advocacy. Dr. Lescano and Clima work with governments, academia and international agencies to build regional capacity.

Lúcia Lohmann is a Brazilian scientist with a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Systematics from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA. Lúcia is a faculty member of the Department of Botany at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and the Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC). Her research is highly integrative, combining data from systematics, ecology, evolution, geology, paleontology, and climatology to understand the drivers of biological diversity, especially in the Amazon. Between 2012-2019, she was the Brazilian coordinator of the project “Assembly and evolution of the Amazonia biota and its environment: An integrative approach,” which aimed to understand how the Amazon basin was assembled over the last 30 million years.

Marcia Macedo is an ecosystem ecologist studying the environmental and societal trade-offs among forest conservation, food production, and climate stability in tropical regions. She combines satellite data, field observations, and modeling to understand how land use and management influence tropical forest and freshwater ecosystems. Marcia’s current research focuses on land-use dynamics in the Amazon and Cerrado, where she explores the limits to agricultural expansion and intensification in a changing climate. She is particularly interested in improving science communication to decision-makers and the public. Marcia is an Associate Scientist and Director of the Water Program at the Woods Hole Research Center.

Yadvinder Malhi is a British climate scientist, with a PhD in Meteorology from University of Reading (United Kingdom). He is currently Professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford. Malhi's work focuses on on the function and sustainability of the biosphere, and its interactions with drivers of global change in the Anthropocene. Much of his work focuses on tropical forests, and he has been working with research teams in Amazonia (especially Brazil, Peru and Bolivia) since 1995, both in the lowland forests and in the Andes. Over the last ten years he has also conduced extensive research in Africa and Asia, and he is founder of the Global Ecosystems Monitoring (GEM) network.

Jose Marengo is a Peruvian scientist with a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, United States. He did a post-doctorate at NASA and Columbia University, and at the Florida State University in climate modelling. He is a senior member of the Scientific Committee of the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change and of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and was one of authors of IPCC 2007, awarded with the Peace Nobel Prize 2007. He has over 200 publications, is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and he is currently General Coordinator of Research and Development at the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN).

Daniel Magnabosco Marra is a Brazilian scientist who combines field data, climate variables and remote sensing to investigate forest dynamics and functioning at the landscape scale. Daniel's research focuses on understanding how the structure and diversity of forests respond to natural disturbances, with special interest on interactions between extreme winds and precipitation with trees. He collaborates in large Amazon projects including the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO), INCT Madeiras da Amazônia and Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE-Tropics). Daniel has a Ph.D. in Natural Sciences from the University of Leipzig. Apart from a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany, he is a professor of Tropical Forest Sciences at the National Institute for Amazonian Research, Brazil.

David McGrath is an American scientist with a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, United States, where he wrote a thesis on the role of itinerant river traders in the Amazon regional economy. From 1992 on he has taught in two interdisciplinary graduate programs: Center for Advanced Amazon Studies of the Federal University of Pará, Brazil, and the Graduate Program on Society, Nature and Development of the Federal University of the West of Pará. His work has focused on the community-based management of floodplain fisheries, fisheries co-management policy and Amazon development issues. He has also helped to create and/or worked in a number of research and policy-oriented NGOs: IMAZON, Woods Hole Research Center, Amazon Environmental Research Institute, Earth Innovation Institute and Sapopema.

John Melack is an American limnologist with a Ph.D. in Zoology from Duke University, United States. He is a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is actively involved in studies of Amazon floodplains. His research also includes studies of the Pantanal of South America, lakes in the Sierra Nevada of California, coastal watersheds and near-shore kelp ecosystems in Santa Barbara Channel, and lakes in eastern Africa. John is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union, and has been a Fulbright Distinguished Chair, Blaustein Visiting Professor at Stanford University, and Gleddon Fellow at the University of Western Australia.

Silvia de Melo Futada is a Brazilian biologist, who plays for a thriving socio-environmental world with justice, freedom and diversity: for 20 years she has been actively working to reach this goal, defending environmental and human constitutional rights. Silvia holds a M.S. in Ecology from Unicamp, São Paulo, Brazil, and has worked at governmental and civil society sectors, as technician, researcher and head both in Natural Resources Office at Espirito Santo Environmental State Institute and in Protected Areas Monitoring Program at Instituto Socioambiental, beyond other occupations.

Mario Melo is an Ecuadorian academic and human rights defender. For 20 years he has been working with Amazonian peoples in defense of their rights. Mario litigates indigenous cases in the Inter-American Human Rights System and in national courts. As a researcher he has focused his work on collective rights and the rights of Nature. He is currently Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and legal advisor to the Pachamama Foundation.

Carlos Mena is an Ecuadorian Professor at the San Francisco de Quito University, Ecuador, and Founding Director of the Institute of Geography at the same University. Carlos is also the Founder and Co-Director of the Galapagos Science Center (GSC), Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, founding member of the Ecuadorian Association of Geographers and member of the Ecuadorian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Mena´s research has covered topics of population and environment, remote sensing, geographic information science, complex adaptive systems, population geography, conservation, political ecology, citizen science, climate change and community development. Carlos has won several prestigious academic honors, including, the Earth Systems Science Fellowship from the US National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA), and has more than 80 publications, including a book published by Springer Science and Business Media.

Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm is a Venezuelan hydrologist and water resources engineer with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has served on the faculty at Northeastern University, the University of Miami, Florida International University, and the University of Maryland. He also spent 5 years as a civil servant at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC. He is a Professor at the George Mason University, Lead Scientist at The Nature Conservancy, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers.

Guido Miranda Chumacero is a Bolivian biologist with a degree from Universidad Mayor de San Andres (UMSA), Bolivia. From the beginning of his career, he was a research associate at Limnology Unit - Institute of Ecology of UMSA. He carried out his first research on the biology and ecology of cave fish in Torotoro National Park and thermal water fish in Potosi. He has worked on ornamental fish projects in several Amazonian rivers. Since 2007, he has been part of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Bolivia team, coordinating wildlife management projects with indigenous communities in northern La Paz and developing research work on fish, fisheries and spectacled caiman management and conservation. He has several publications on wildlife management and Bolivian ichthyofauna.

Encarni Montoya is a Spanish biologist, with a PhD from Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, and postdoctoral experience in Spain and the UK. She was Lecturer at the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Liverpool, and is currently a tenured researcher at Geosciences Barcelona. She studies the dynamics of neotropical vegetation in the longterm and their responses to environmental drives such as climate, natural hazards or human activity, and uses biological remains including pollen preserved in sediments.

Mariana Montoya is a Peruvian Geographer who holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Texas – Austin. She is currently the Country Director for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Peru.

Edel Moraes lives in the São João Agroextractive Settlement, on Marajó Island (Pará, Brazil). She is an extractive leader of the National Council of Extractive Populations, acting nationally and internationally in favor of respect for traditional community rights. She completed her master's degree at the Federal University of Brasília and is currently a member of the Cauim Research Group - Studies and Dialogical Practices in the Context of Traditional Peoples and Territories.

Monica Moraes is a Bolivian botanist with a Ph.D. from the Aarhus University, Denmark, and is currently a full-time professor and researcher at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres, working at the Herbario Nacional de Bolivia. Monica participates in several study projects focused on Bolivian tropical flora, and is a specialist in Bolivian palm trees. Monica has won the 2006 Jubilee Award from the International Foundation for Science, is a member of the Bolivian Academy of Science and has over 100 publications, including some in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.

María Moreno de los Ríos is a Spanish-Ecuadorian environmental biologist with a MSc. in Ibero-American International Relations (with her thesis on the international protection of the Indigenous Peoples in Isolation in the Yasuní Biophere Reserve) and a MSc. in International Development Cooperation (UPV-HEGOA Institute). She has more than 15 years of experience in international development work, with emphasis on socio-environmental and gender issues. She has worked with multi- and bilateral agencies (UNDP, IUCN, AECID) and leading NGOs in South America (Fundación Pachamama). Actually, she is Hivos Senior Programme Manager for the Amazon, coordinating the All Eyes on the Amazon Programme. In IUCN she led the Amazon Green List and the IAPA project. María is part of the Core Group of the Network of Women in Conservation LAC, member of the Steering Committee of the Leadership Program for Women in Conservation of Colorado State University, and member of the LAC Women Major Group, expert in the IUCN CEESP, among others.

Paulo Moutinho is a Brazilian ecologist with a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. He is co-founder and former Executive Director of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM), Brazil, where he currently works as a senior scientist. He has worked in the Amazon for 20 years, and he is co-author of the compensated reduction of deforestation, a concept that contributed to the development of the mechanism known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. He participated actively in the establishment of the Amazon Fund and the Brazilian National Policy for Climate Change, and served as an Adjunct Associate Scientist at The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC).

Lincoln Muniz Alves is a Brazilian climate scientist, with a PhD in Meteorology from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Lincoln is currently a researcher at INPE's at Earth System Science Centre and is involved in the Assessment of Impacts and Vulnerability to Climate Change in Brazil and Strategies for Adaptation Options, the First National Assessment Report of the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change, and the Third National Communication of Brazil to the UFNCCC and RECCS-Regional Economic Aspects of Climate Change in South America. He is Lead Author of Atlas of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6-WG1).

Maria R. Murmis is an Argentinean research associate at UASB Quito and an independent consultant specializing in the sustainability dimensions of international cooperation and the bio-economy. Maria holds an MSc in Energy and Resources from the University of California Berkeley. She works on the supply-side of global climate policy and alternative development paths for biodiversity hotspot countries, with a focus on Ecuador and its Amazon region.

Gabriela Nardoto is a Brazilian biologist with a Ph.D. in Applied Ecology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She is a professor at the University of Brasilia, and the coordinator of the Environmental Isotope Studies, an integrative research group that uses stable isotopes as a central tool in ecological and forensics studies in Brazil. She is the president of RENIF (Rede Nacional de Isotopos Forenses), an integrative network between civil society and law enforcement looking for the implementation of isotope methods against missing persons, wildlife crimes, and food frauds in Brazil, among others. Gabriela is also an associate editor for Journal of Ecology and PeerJ.

Eduardo Neves is a Brazilian historian and archaeologist with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Indiana University, United States. He is Professor of Brazilian Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at University of São Paulo, Brazil. He has supervised or is currently supervising over 50 Masters theses and PhD dissertations on Amazonian archaeology. Dr. Neves has more than 30 years of research in the Amazon, with projects in areas such as the Upper Rio Negro river, the Atlantic coast of Amapá, Manaus, Tefé, Upper Madeira river, Middle Guaporé river, Eastern Acre, as well as in Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia. He has designed the program for the undergraduate course in Archaeology of the State University of Amazonas, and has been awarded the Research Prize of the Shanghai Archaeological Forum in 2019.

Valeria Ochoa-Herrera is an Ecuadorian scientist who holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Arizona. She is currently a Dean of the School of Engineering, Science and Technology at Universidad del Rosario and a Member of the Ecuadorian Academy of Science.

Gustavo Oliveira is a Brazilian philosopher and geographer with a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Berkeley, United States. He is an assistant professor of global and international studies at the University of California, Irvine. He has also served as visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Swarthmore College, United States, and visiting assistant professor of economic geography at Peking University, China. Working with ethnographic methods on global political ecology and geopolitics, Oliveira’s research has addressed the expansion of soy production and biofuels in South America, Chinese investments in Brazilian agribusiness and infrastructure, and the blind spots of eco-modernism that sacrifice the Brazilian Cerrado in failed efforts to spare land in the Amazon.

Rafael S. Oliveira is a Brazilian biologist with a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from the University of California – Berkeley, United States, and is currently a professor of Ecology at University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. His research is focused on understanding how multiple dimensions of biodiversity, particularly the functional dimension, modulates ecosystem functioning and resilience of tropical forests and savannas. He has more than 20 years of research experience on the functional ecology of Amazonian vegetation, aiming to understand the properties of the system that confer resilience to multiple disturbances.

Jean Ometto is a Senior Researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Space Research and Coordinator of the Earth System Science Center (CCST / INPE), CNPq Fellow and Postgraduate Professor at CCST / INPE and at NEPAM (UNICAMP). Appointed as IPCC contributor to WG-II - Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (for AR5 and AR6 cycles) and to the IPCC Task Force on GHG Emissions Inventories; Coordinate Lead Author on IPBES on Regional Assessment; Former Brazilian representative of the Executive Board of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and Regional Director of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI); Member of the American Geophysical Union's Committee on International Participation (AGU-CIP); Member of the Coordination of the FAPESP Program of Research on Global Climate Change; Member of the Belmont Forum Steering Committee; Vice-Chair of the Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (CLIMA Network); Member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Carbon Project (GCP).

Fernando Ozorio de Almeida is a Brazilian archeologist who holds a Ph.D. in Archeology from the University of São Paulo. He is currently a professor in the Department of Archeology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. With fellow Amazonians, he helped found the AmazonArch, the largest database ever created for Amazon sites.

Dr. Moraes is a Brazilian archaeologist with a Ph.D. from Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará.

Daniela Peluso is an American cultural anthropologist, with a PhD from Columbia University. She is currently an Emeritus Fellow at the University of Kent (United Kingdom). Daniela has dedicated the last four decades to Amazonian research and is committed to Indigenous and local communities, federations and grassroots movements that strive toward social and environmental justice, sustainability and wellbeing. Her research focuses on Indigenous urbanization, informal economies, corruption, gender, personhood and finance.

Oliver Phillips is a British Professor in Tropical Ecology at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Oliver’s research goal is to understand the dynamics of Earth’s tropical forests, how these respond to our changing climate, and how they feedback on our planet. With colleagues, he leads long-term monitoring tracking Amazon forest trees, carbon and biodiversity for 30 years. This work spans 400 sites (the RAINFOR project), has catalyzed similar approaches elsewhere, and connects researchers worldwide via ForestPlots.net.

Natalia Piland is a Peruvian-American doctoral candidate from the University of Chicago. Her doctoral research focuses on avian diversity along urban-rural gradients of Latin America (Field Museum of Natural History & University of Chicago). Natalia is interested in the ways in which humans interact with nature and the ways in which scientists interact with society. Current research includes naming practices in ornithology, urban resident attitudes towards birds, access in scientific practice, and reviews of participatory science experiences in Iberoamerica and the tropics. Natalia has been a NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Mansueto Urban Institute Doctoral Writing Fellow, and a Smithsonian James Smithson Fellow.

Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez is a native of the Peruvian Amazon, growing up in a remote village alongside the Ucayali River. He received his Ph.D, degree in Forestry from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, United States. Dr. Pinedo-Vasquez does research on issues related to the impact of resource management and land use on the sustainable provision of ecosystem services and goods. Recently, he has been working on smallholder’s responses to the emerging challenges and opportunities produced by urbanization, climate change, and other socio-environmental shifts in Amazonia and other tropical regions.

Paulo Pompeu is a Brazilian biologist with a Ph.D. in Environment Sanitation and Water Resources from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is a full-time professor at Federal University of Lavras, Brazil, and has served as an environmental consultant at Acqua Consultoria. His research interests are in fish ecology, river restoration, and impacts of power plants. His projects involve most Brazilian watersheds, including different regions in the Brazilian Amazon, and have focused on the impacts of different human activities on biodiversity and in ecosystem’s functioning. He was awarded by the Brazilian Society of Zoology for the best publication in the area of Zoology in 2018/2019.

Germán Poveda is a Colombian civil engineer with a Ph.D. in Water Resources from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a post-doctorate in hydro-ecology from the University of Colorado, United States. Dr. Poveda is Professor at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and is an integral member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific global organization awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Dr. Poveda is a member of the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, and of the Spain’s Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences. He has won four times the Fundación Alejandro Ángel Escobar Award, the most prestigious scientific award in Colombia, and was appointed by Colombia’s president as a member of the International Mission of Experts on Science, Education, Technology and Innovation.

Alex Pryor is an Argentinian entrepreneur with a B.Sc. from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, United States. He is the Co-founder of Guayaki Yerba Mate, an organization based on the model of fair trade, sustainable agriculture and earth-friendly practices. Guayakí’s vision holds that yerba mate culture will power a Market Driven Regeneration™ business model to regenerate ecosystems and create vibrant communities.

Dr. Raoni Rajão is a Brazilian Social Scientists who holds a PhD in Organization, Work and Technology from Lancaster University. Raoni is a professor of Social Studies of Science at the Department of Production Engineering at UFMG - Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Adriana Ramos is a Brazilian Environmental Policy Specialist with a degree from State University of New York (SUNY). She coordinates the Policy and Law Program of the Instituto Socioambiental, Brazil, and has been working on advocacy to improve social and environmental legislation and policies related to indigenous peoples’ rights, tropical forests and other ecosystems in Brazil for over 25 years. She served as one of the representatives of NGOs in the Guidance Committee of the Amazon Fund, coordinator of the Brazilian NGOs Forum working group on forests, member of the National Environmental Council of Brazil and member of the Brazilian NGO Association board of directors. She is also member of the Board of Directors Instituto Centro Vida, Instituto Internacional de Educação do Brasil and Instituto Democracia e Sustentabilidade.

Ying Fan-Reinfelder is an American scientist with a Ph.D. from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering of Utah State University, United States. She is a professor at Rutgers University, United States, and studies how hydrologic processes modulate global water, energy, and biogeochemical cycles, especially how water shapes plant ecology/evolution. She served on the National Academy of Science Committee on Future Water Resource Needs for the Nation, on the editorial board of the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc., and is currently serving on NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee and the editorial board of the journal Hydrological Processes.

Natalia Restrepo-Coupe is a Canadian Micrometeorologist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.

Camila Ribas is a Brazilian scientist with a Ph.D. in Genetics and Evolutionary Biology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She was a Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, United States, investigating comparative phylogeography of Amazonian birds. She is currently a researcher at the National Institute for Amazonian Research, Brazil, establishing past relationships between biotic and abiotic evolution by combining genomic data with the geologic and climatic history of Amazonia. This knowledge is applied for assessing and mitigating the effects of deforestation and infrastructure development on Amazonian biodiversity and on the Amazonian peoples that both sustain and depend on this biodiversity.

João Paulo Ribeiro Capobianco is a Brazilian biologist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo. He has served as the National Secretary for Biodiversity and Forests of the Ministry of the Environment of Brazil and Deputy Minister of the Environment of Brazil. He also served as Coordinator of the Permanent Federal Government Working Group on Deforestation in the Amazon, president of the Brazilian Council for Genetic Resources and the Brazilian Commission on Forests, and deputy president of the National Council of the Environment. Capobianco was a visiting professor at Columbia University (2008-09), where he integrated the CEES – Center for Environment, Economy, and Society. He also worked as an associate researcher at Ipam – Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia. Capobianco is currently vice president of the IDS, director of Métra – Planejamento Socioambiental Estratégico Ltda.

Luciana Rizzo is a Brazilian physicist who holds a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics from the Federal University of Sao Paulo. She is currently a professor at the Federal Univ. of São Paulo (Unifesp). She is experienced in atmospheric aerosols, investigating the biosphere-atmosphere interactions and the impacts of urban and biomass burning emissions to the climate and human health. Her current research activities include a data analysis on the variability of carbon fluxes between the forest and the atmosphere, using artificial intelligence tools.

Fernando H. Roca Alcázar is a Peruvian Jesuit priest, doctor in Social Anthropology (Ethnobotanical) from EHESS, Paris, and Principal Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUCP). He worked (1988-2000) in the Peruvian Amazon, in the Awajún-Wampis region of Alto Marañón, Condorcanqui and Imaza provinces in Amazonas. Full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Peru, member of the Geographic Society of Lima, and of the Board of Directors of the International Palm Society, Dr. Roca is currently the Academic Director of Church Relations at PUCP, where he teaches and also directs the Master's Degree in Advanced Amazonian Studies. Dr. Roca is also an advisor to the Pan Amazon Network of the Church. He was a member of the preparatory committee of the Amazonian Synod and its adviser. He studies man-nature relationships, particularly the dialogue of traditional knowledge of native peoples with contemporary development proposals.

Bruna Rocha is a Brazilian archaeologist with a Ph.D. in Archaeology from University College London, United Kingdom. She is a lecturer and researcher at Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará, Brazil, studying the long-term history of the peoples of the Tapajós River, particularly along its middle and upper reaches, a region at the centre of a number of conflicts as industrial society encroaches upon traditionally occupied territories. Dr. Rocha has applied archaeology to support indigenous land claims within this context and more recently has begun to work along the Iriri River basin to help debunk the idea of a pristine forest that has underlain attempts to exclude traditional riverine communities from strict nature reserves.

Humberto Rocha is a Brazilian engineer and hydroclimatologist with a D.Sc. in Meteorology from University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil. He has been professor at the USP’s Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences for more than 25 years and conducts research on hydroclimatology and ecoclimatology, with emphasis in the water and carbon cycles of land ecosystems and their dependence on the climate variability and change. He coordinates the Lab of Climate and Biosphere that consolidated historically nine field experimental sites with flux tower and hydrological measures in native areas and croplands in Amazonia, Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes. He is keen to know how physical and non-physical ecosystem services help humans being happy on Earth.

Carolina Rodríguez Alzza is a Peruvian linguist and anthropologist, instructor in the Department of Anthropology at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). Carolina is a researcher at Grupo de Antropología Amazónica (GAA-PUCP), and her work focuses on Amazon area and indigenous people/languages. Carolina develops collaborative projects with Iskonawa people on documentation and revitalization of language and culture.

César Rodríguez-Garavito is a Colombian environmental justice and human rights scholar and practitioner, with a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States. He is Co-Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law and the Editor-in-Chief of Open Global Rights. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford (USA), Brown (USA), NYU (USA), University of Melbourne (Australia), European University Institute (Italy), University of Pretoria (South Africa) and the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil). He has conducted research and worked with indigenous peoples, rural communities and civil society organizations in the Amazon region of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador for over a decade. Dr. Rodríguez-Garavito has been an Adjunct Judge of the Constitutional Court of Colombia and an expert witness of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Jon Paul Rodriguez is a Venezuelan Professor at the Center for Ecology of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations (Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas― IVIC), and he is a founder, past Board Member (1987-2001, 2009-2012) and President (2001-2008, 2013-present) of Provita (a Venezuelan conservation NGO established in 1987). Dr. Rodriguez was awarded with a Fulbright scholarship to obtain his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University (1999). He currently chairs the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, and was actively involved in the development of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, an initiative led by the Commission on Ecosystem Management. Dr. Rodriguez’s work focuses on understanding patterns in the spatial distribution of threatened species and ecosystems, as well as the underlying causes of these patterns, and the development of policy guidelines for biodiversity conservation.

Martha Rosero-Peña is a Colombian researcher from the University of Florida, and also specialist in race and Ethnicity. Her dissertation is about social-ecological resilience assessment with Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendant forest societies emphasizing ontology role during crisis. Martha also holds an undergraduate degree in Animal Science and a M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences, from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Dr. Rosero-Peña’s has previously worked on the Chocó biogeographic region, and the Amazon with WWF; Institute of Ethnobiology; Tropenbos Colombia; Colombian National Education Service.

Eduardo Roxo is a Brazilian Biologist who has a Master in Ecology from Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil) on the use of urban waste to recover degraded slopes in the Atlantic Forest. He is a senior consultant on integrated biotic and socioeconomic studies on engineering projects for major infrastructure and urbanization plans, and Founding Partner of Verdevolta, which has implemented Forest Rehabilitation Programs on more than 400 hectares in São Paulo. Additionally, Eduardo is Founding Partner of Atina Ativos Naturais Ltda, leading its commercial team in the São Paulo factory and R&D in Pouso Alegre. He is responsible for sustainable management of candeia in rural properties of Minas Gerais, in over 20,000 hectares. He is also a consultant with Rizoma Regenerative Agriculture for integration of forestry and agricultural systems and partner of Edro, a service company in agroforestry production chains.

Boris Sakschewski is a German Postdoc at Earth System Analysis Research Department in the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Potsdam. Dr. Sakschewski´s research focuses on improving the functional biodiversity in the dynamic global vegetation model (LPJmL) by investigating the role of tree trait diversity for atmospheric moisture transport across South America.

Scott Saleska is an American Associate Professor at the University of Arizona, USA. He obtained his Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and his research focuses on how climate interacts with plant physiology, demography, and ecological processes to influence or control biogeochemical cycling from local to global scales. Dr. Saleska uses multidisciplinary approaches that combine classical techniques of field ecology and forestry with advanced technological methods and modeling to integrate biogeochemical processes to ecosystem scales. Two Dr. Saleska’s current projects include using new technologies to measure whole-ecosystem isotopic exchange and understanding Amazon forest carbon exchange. His work in the Amazon is designed to build upon ongoing investigations of how forest demography and disturbance dynamics control carbon cycling in old-growth Amazon forest.

Gilvan Sampaio is a Brazilian meteorologist who has been working on climate modelling and climate studies for the last 25 years at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil; initially as a Researcher and more recently as a Senior Researcher. Currently, he is the general coordinator of the Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC/INPE), and his areas of expertise are biosphere-atmosphere interactions, regional climate and land surface processes, global climate modelling and paleoclimatology. From 2016 to 2019 he was head of the CPTEC’s Operations Division. From 2009 to 2016 he was head of the Group of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions at the Earth System Science Centre (CCST/INPE). He has also worked researching the impacts of changes in land use and global warming on South American climate using Earth System models.

Henrique dos Santos Pereira is a Brazilian scientist with a Ph.D. degree in Ecology from Pennsylvania State University, United States. Henrique is a professor of agricultural ecology at Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), Brazil, and Executive Secretary of the National Association for Research and Graduate in Environment and Society (ANPPAS), where he was previously President. He is also national representative of the Network for Environmental studies of Portuguese-speaking countries (REALP), Associated Researcher at National Institute for Research in Amazon (INPA), and member of the coordination board of UFAM graduation program in environmental sciences and sustainability. He was the superintendent of the Brazilian Environmental Agency (IBAMA, Amazonas State) and scientific advisor for the Commission Pastoral Land (CPT, Amazonas State).

Marianne Schmink is an American Anthropologist, Professor Emerita and Distinguished Teaching Scholar of Latin American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Florida (UF). She served as Director of UF’s interdisciplinary Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) research and training program from 1988-2010. She directed a 13-year USAID funded community research and extension program in western Amazonia (1990-2003). She co-authored (with Charles H. Wood) “Contested Frontiers in Amazonia” (Columbia University Press, 1992, published in Portuguese in 2012 by the Editora of the Federal University of Pará, Brazil, as “Conflitos Sociais e a Formação da Amazônia”. She co-authored with Mâncio Lima Cordeiro, “Rio Branco: A Cidade da Florestania” (2008, UFPa/UFAC), in addition to three edited books and over fifty articles, book chapters, and reports.

Glenn H. Shepard Jr. is an American ethnobotanist, medical anthropologist, and filmmaker,who holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a tenured researcher in the Human Sciences Division at the Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Myrtle Shock is a Brazilian archaeologist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Barbara.

Miles Silman is an American Tropical Ecologist with a Ph.D. from Wake Forest University. He is the Andrew Sabin Professor of Conservation Biology at Wake Forest University, and director of the WF Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. He is a tropical ecologist who has spent the last 30 years working in the Amazon Basin and Andes to understand the diversity of the natural world, how it functions, and how to conserve it. His current projects also include the relationship between humans and nature to conserve large areas of managed and wild land.

Celso H. L. Silva Junior is a Brazilian environmental engineer and remote sensing scientist. He has a Ph.D. from the National Institute for Space Research-INPE. He currently works for Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia - IPAM and Universidade Federal do Maranhão - UFMA. He is studying tropical forest degradation and its contributions to carbon emissions.

Plinio Sist is a French biologist and the director of the Research Unit Forests and Societies at Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad), gathering 40 researchers and 30 master and PhD students. He is also the coordinator of the Tropical and subtropical silviculture unit of Division 1 at International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO). He is a tropical forest ecologist with more than 25-years experience in South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Costa-Rica) and SouthEast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia). He obtained a PhD in 1989 in tropical Biology at the University of Paris VI. He introduced and tested Reduced-Impact Logging in Indonesia in the early 90’s in East Kalimantan. His main interest is to understand the impact of forest resource harvesting on the ecology of tropical forests in order to recommend sustainable forest management practices. He has more than 150 publications and conference presentations on this issue.

Charlotte Smith holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Lancaster University.

Carlos Souza Jr. is a Brazilian geographer. He completed his undergraduate degree in Geology, in Brazil, at the Pará State Federal University, a M.Sc. in Soil Science at Penn State University, and a Ph.D. in Geography at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Dr. Souza Jr. is an associate researcher at Imazon, focusing on remote sensing for mapping and monitoring forests, land use and land cover change, and spatial modeling. In 2010, he received the Skoll Award on Social Entrepreneurship in recognition for the development and operationalization of SAD, the first independent forest monitoring system in Brazil. He also co-founded Terras, a startup which develops geospatial apps for social-environmental risk analysis, monitoring, and traceability of rural properties. In 2017, he received the Conservation Fellowship from the Mulago Foundation for his work with Terras.

Gabriella Tabet is a Brazilian Biologist and Master's student at the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Her interests are focused on how hosts are grouped by their functional traits and their role in the transmission cycle of zoonotic parasites, in the light of ecological networks.

Hans ter Steege is a Dutch ecologist with a PhD from the Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands. Ter Steege is the Group Leader at Naturalis Biodiversity Center, and had built up large network of collaborating colleagues in the Amazon and outside: The Amazon Tree Diversity Network. With this network, ter Steege and his colleagues study patterns and processes of species composition, relative abundance patterns, and functional behavior of the Amazon forest, and its evolution.

Henyo Trindade Barretto Filho is a Brazilian anthropologist. He has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of São Paulo and has worked as professor and researcher in the Department of Social Sciences of the Federal University of Amazonas and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Brasilia, his present occupation. Dr. Trindade Barretto Filho was, for ten years, Program Manager in the International Institute of Education of Brazil (IEB), a Brasília-based NGO, where he coordinated scholarships and course programs. There he was also involved in projects targeting institutional strengthening and empowerment of community leaders to defend their rights and to promote sustainable socio environmental development, as well as fostering conservation of biodiversity in the Amazon and Cerrado.

Laurent Troost is a Belgian Architect based in Manaus, founder of Laurent Troost Architectures. He has won several international competitions and awards, such as the Dezeen Award or the IAI Most Creativity Award. Laurent has also been the Urban Planning Director for the Municipality of Manaus from 2013 until 2020 and is currently a consultant for the World Bank Group.

Fernando Trujillo is a Colombian Marine Biologist with a Doctorate in Zoology at University of Aberdeen (Scotland). He is a corresponding Member of the Colombian Academy of Sciences and has recognized experience in aquatic ecology with emphasis on aquatic vertebrates, endangered species, wildlife trafficking, agreements and fisheries management, toxic waste in aquatic systems and wetlands. Additionally, he has experience in Management Plans for Protected Areas, Endangered Species, wildlife monitoring and environmental impact assessments. Dr. Trujillo was awarded the Emily Shane distinction for conservation projects by the Marine Mammal Society and nominated by Rolex for the International Conservation Award and by the BBC for a life dedicated to the conservation of endangered species. Dr. Trujillo is Associate Professor at the National University for the Doctorate in Amazon Studies and has led more than 40 expeditions in South America, Asia and Antarctica.

Susan Trumbore is an American scientist who uses radiocarbon to trace the timescales associated with the flow of carbon through terrestrial ecosystems, including efforts to understand soil organic matter persistence and plant allocation. She maintains a long-standing interest in biosphere-atmosphere exchange of energy, water and trace gases and the role of disturbance in altering those interactions. Current large collaborative projects in the Amazon include the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) near Manaus and the Tanguro Flux Tower Project in Mato Grosso, Brazil. In addition to leading the Processes Department at the MPI for Biogeochemistry, Trumbore is Professor of Earth System Science at UC Irvine. She is editor-in-chief of the new open access journal AGU Advances.

Carmen Ulloa Ulloa is an Ecuadorian botanist, Curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden, USA. She earned her B.Sc. in Biology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and her Ph.D. at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Dr. Ulloa specializes in neotropical flora, especially high Andean plants. She is an editor of the Flora Mesoamericana project and member of Ecuador’s National Academy of Sciences. Recently, she coordinated a major collaboration to produce a list of all the vascular plants of the Americas.

Adalberto Val is a Brazilian senior researcher with a Ph.D. in Fresh Water Biology and Inland Fisheries from the Brazilian National Institute for Research of the Amazon (INPA) in Brazil. Since 1981, he is also a senior researcher with INPA, studying environmental adaptations of fish, including climate changes. He supervised more than 100 students, authored around 190 articles, book chapters and books, including “Fishes of the Amazon”, Springer (1995) and “The Physiology of Tropical Fishes”, Academic Press (2006). He has delivered more than 150 conferences worldwide and acted as General Director of INPA/MCTI for eight years (2006-2014). Dr. Val is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and awardee of the Grand Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit (Brazil) and the Award of Excellence of the American Fisheries Society - Physiology Section (USA).

Judson F. Valentim is a Brazilian researcher at Embrapa Acre. He has a Ph.D. in Agronomy (1987) from the University of Florida. He was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard University in the Sustainability Science Program and Associate Researcher at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (2013-2014). He has experience in managing research and development groups and institutions, as General Director of Embrapa Acre (1995-1999, 2008-2013, 2019-). His research focuses on sustainable intensification and integration of agriculture and livestock production systems in the Brazilian Amazon. He also participates in international research groups focusing on linking science with policy action for sustainable development in the Brazilian Amazon.

Mariana Varese is a Peruvian scientist and the Director of Amazon Landscapes at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and coordinator of the Citizen Science for the Amazon Network. A natural resources economist with over 20 years of conservation experience in the Amazon and Latin America and the Caribbean, Mariana holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Florida. She has ample experience in community-based conservation, landscape and multi-scale conservation approaches and in evidence-based participatory planning and adaptive management. Her current areas of interest are open and collaborative knowledge networks, citizen science, common goods and the effective use of evidence in decision making.

Silvia Margarita Vidal Ontivero is a Venezuelan anthropologist who obtained her Ph.D. in Biology from the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, IVIC. She has more than 20 years research experience in the Northwest Amazon (Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia) and other regions with Arawak groups and their Carib, Tukanos, and Makú neighbors, non-indigenous populations, etc. She also has a wide experience in public policy management (educational, cultural, and social). Since 2006, she is Professor in the Doctoral program of Anthropology at the Instituto de Investigaciones Bioantropológicas y Arqueológicas, Facultad de Odontología, at the Universidad de Los Andes (ULA) in Mérida, Venezuela. Since 2015, she is Academic Advisor and director of PROMAT, an audiovisual production agency.

Luciana Villa Nova is a Brazilian Biochemistry Pharmacist specialized in Business Administration and Sustainability Management. She joined Natura in 1996 in a training program and throughout the years she has gained experience in various areas such as R&D, Scientific Area Networking Management, Technical Business Unit Management and Sustainability. She is now in charge of sustainability strategic planning at Natura, working on projects in sustainable use of biodiversity, including the management of social local initiatives for the Amazon rainforest and the Amazon Program. Luciana is also responsible for Natura's strategy and guidelines for social inclusion and local development. She is currently studying for a masters degree at Fundação Getulio Vargas / São Paulo in Management for Competitiveness in Sustainability. She is passionate about natural products and biodiversity.

Robert Wallace is a British zoologist and Doctor in Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioral Ecology. He has worked in the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) since 1999 as director of the Madidi-Tambopata Great Landscape Conservation Program and Landscape Conservation Expert of the Amazon Program. His work within WCS included the leadership of the Identidad Madidi scientific expedition, between 2015 and 2017. which received a National Prize for Science and Technology and the Chuquiago Marka award. He has led research on the jaguar, Andean bear, condor, giant otter, and various primates and ungulates from Bolivia. He is the author and co-author of nearly 200 publications on Bolivian wildlife, and has supervised more than 40 Bolivian undergraduate and graduate theses.

Jennifer Watling is a British archaeologist specializing in the integration of plant microfossil analysis (phytoliths and starch grains) to understand plant resource use, cultivation and management practices, and past landscape transformations in pre-Columbian Amazonia. She has mainly worked in Southwestern Amazonia, publishing on topics such as the environmental impact of the enigmatic ‘geoglyph’ sites of Acre, and the history of plant resource use at the more than 6,000-year-old Teotonio and Monte Castelo archaeological sites in the Upper Madeira. She also collaborates on projects looking at long-term vegetation dynamics in the Montanha and Mangabal ribeirinho territory, Upper Tapajós, and on the ethnoarchaeology of plant and soil management among the Kuikuro people of the Xingu Indigenous Territory. Her eventual goal is to combine archaeological and palaeoecological data with indigenous and traditional knowledge to advance current conservation and geopolitical debates in the Amazon.

Gasodá Wawaeitxapôh Suruí is a Brazilian indigenous scientist and turismologist of the Paiter people and is pursuing his Ph.D. in Geography from the Federal University of Rondônia (UFRO), Brazil. He is the coordinator of the Indigenous Cultural Center Paiter Wagôh Pakob, an initiative aimed to promote appreciation, preservation and strengthening of the culture, values and traditional knowledge of the Paiter People in the Indigenous Territory Sete de Setembro. He is a researcher at the Study and Research Group on Amazonian Livelihoods and Cultures and at the Research Group on Human Geography, Nature and Territoriality of UFRO. Gasodá has participated in one episode of the program My World, My Computer, telling how technology helped to insert his people on the map of environmental sustainability and indigenous tourism.

Carlos Eduardo Frickmann Young is a Brazilian Professor at the Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). He is the Coordinator of the Environmental Economics Research Group (GEMA-IE/UFRJ), and collaborating Professor of the Graduate Programs in Environmental Sciences at the State University of Mato Grosso (PPGCA/UNEMAT) & the Federal University of Amazonas (PPGCASA/UFAM). Carlos Eduardo is currently a researcher at the Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia em Políticas Públicas, Estratégias e Desenvolvimento (INCT/PPED). He is also a member of the Scientific Council, Brazilian Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BPBES); Science Panel for the Amazon; and Board Member of the Fundação Amazonas Sustentável.

Galo Zapata-Ríos is an Ecuadorian scientist who holds a B.S.c in Biological Sciences from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, a M.Sc. degree in Environmental Studies from Ohio University, and a Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from University of Florida. Dr. Zapata-Ríos is the science director for Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ecuador Program. He has been involved in several research and conservation initiatives in Ecuador, including the creation of reserve networks, community-based wildlife management, facilitation of human-wildlife coexistence, wildlife monitoring at the landscape scale, and the preparation of conservation action plans for endangered species. Dr. Zapata-Rios has more than 40 publications in prestigious scientific journals.

Stanford Zent is an American Anthropologist who holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is currently a Researcher at the Center of Anthropology at the The Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research.