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Global Forest Watch Staff

Lars Laestadius

Project Manager - Russia

Dr. Lars Laestadius is currently leading the forest-related work of the World Resources Institute in Russia and Eastern Europe. This includes designing and establishing a multi-stakeholder Timber Compliance Assessment Partnership (TCAP) in Russia, mapping of high conservation value forests in Russia, assessing the carbon budget and climate mitigation potential of forestry and land use in Russia, and mapping of long continuity forest landscapes in Romania. Most of this work falls under WRI's Global Forest Watch initiative. Dr. Laestadius has also led mapping and forest policy work in North America.

Prior to his current position, Dr. Laestadius served as scientific secretary in the COST Secretariat of the European Commission (DG Research), where he was responsible for coordinating nationally funded European forestry and forest products research. He has previously held a similar position in the Faculty of Forestry at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and been a researcher at the Faculty of Forestry and at the private Swedish Forest Research Institute SkogForsk (Skogsarbeten).

Dr. Laestadius holds a forest degree from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and a Ph.D. in Forestry from Virginia Tech.

In addition to Swedish, Dr. Laestadius is fluent in English and conversant in Russian.

Expertise: Russian forest sector, Eastern Europe and North America, monitoring with satellites in boreal areas, global sensitive areas mapping, forest certification, industrial forestry, pulp and paper processing industry, forests and carbon, Europe and Northern Asia Forest Law Enforcement and Governance Process, World Bank Russia, European Commission.

E-mail: larsl@wri.org

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Benoît Mertens

Cameroon Project Coordinator

Benoît Mertens joined GFW in September 2004 as our Cameroon Project Coordinator based in Yaoundé. Benoît is an expert in Remote Sensing-GIS projects in Central Africa. He comes to us from the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Centre de Coopération lnternationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD-Forêt) in France. He has worked and lived in Indonesia where he studied landcover change with emphasis on forest sectors in tropical area and has worked or conducted studies in forest cover changes using Remote Sensing and GIS in China, Indonesia, Brazil, Bolivia and throughout Central Africa.

Expertise: Central African forest sector, Cameroon government natural resource agencies and NGO networks, remote sensing and geographic information systems for monitoring tropical forests, forest monitoring in China, Indonesia, Brazil, Bolivia, Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

E-mail: benoit.mertens@iucn.org

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Pierre Méthot

Program Manager for Central Africa

Mr. Pierre Méthot is a Forest Engineer and a chartered administrator with a Masters degree in Public Administration. He has more than 27 years of professional experience in forestry and natural resources management, and in international development and management. His fields of expertise include forest sector reviews, national forest development plans and strategies, forest policy and legislation, forest revenue systems, feasibility studies, forest programmes and project management and, finally, in general management of private logging and wood processing private companies.

Mr. Méthot is also quite familiar with reforestation, agro-forestry, social forestry, agri-business and rural development as well as in forest ecosystems management and conservation. Mr. Méthot has extensive international experience having completed 36 projects in over 25 countries and having conducted many other business development missions in other countries.

Expertise: African forest sector, tropical forestry, forest system architecture, concession management, global tropical forest products industry and trade, independent monitoring, forest law enforcement and compliance, International Tropical Timber Organization, World Bank Africa, forestry consulting firms

E-mail: pmethot@wri.org

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Susan Minnemeyer

GIS Associate & Lab Manager

Susan Minnemeyer joined the World Resources Institute in May 1999 and is the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Lab Manager for Global Forest Watch (GFW), an international initiative to provide data and information on the world's remaining primary forests. Since joining GFW, she has produced maps and databases for reports on forests in Cameroon, Gabon, and Canada that describe the state of the forests and provide information on logging and the companies operating in these forests.

Susan's work focuses primarily on the forests of Central Africa. She is developing region-wide datasets on logging concessions, protected areas, and roads for the region to determine the extent of forest fragmentation and the degree to which low access forests are protected or threatened. In Cameroon, GFW is working with local partners to create the first national dataset on logging roads, digitized from current satellite imagery. Susan has twice led GIS training sessions in Yaoundé, Cameroon for Cameroon Environmental Watch, a local non-governmental organization and partner of GFW.

In addition, Susan helps GFW partners to obtain satellite imagery and donated software for GIS and remote sensing. She has also helped to make GFW datasets and satellite imagery freely available on the internet to other organizations.

Susan received a Master's degree in environmental management from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, where she majored in conservation biology/landscape ecology and studied GIS applications for conservation.  She also has a B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Expertise: Geographic Information Systems technology and providers, map design and production, remote sensing, monitoring logging roads with satellite imagery, building local mapping capacity, Cameroon concession system, interactive mapping technologies, independent monitoring, forest change indicators

E-mail: susanm@wri.org

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Ruth Noguerón

Program Coordinator - North and South America

Ruth is the Global Forest Watch Program Coordinator for North and South America.  Prior to her work with GFW, she was a part-time Program Assistant with the Forest Frontiers Initiative at WRI.

As the North America Coordinator, Ruth provides general administrative support to the North America team.  In addition, she provides support in minor research activities, and is the liaison between the Global Forest Watch Canada and U.S. partners and WRI colleagues.

Before coming to the World Resources Institute, she worked in México City at the Tropical Action Forest Program (PROAFT).

Also in México, Ruth participated in a national effort, coordinated by Drs. Arturo Gómez-Pompa and Rodolfo Dirzo, to evaluate the natural protected areas of México, a project sponsored by the World Bank and the Mexican government.

Ruth has a Bachelor’s degree in biology from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in México City, and an Associate’s degree in applied geography from Montgomery College, Maryland.

Expertise: South America forests and forests monitoring, NGO forest monitoring networks, poverty, illegal logging, certification, ecosystem goods and services, sensitive forest area mapping, protected areas, social, indigenous, and community issues, map-based analyses of human Pressure, transboundary conservation, North American forest issues.

E-mail: ruthn@wri.org

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Lawrence Nsoyuni

Trainer, GIS/Remote Sensing

Nsoyuni joined Global Forest Watch in March 2004 to develop forest data and information databases, train GFW partners on using these databases and GIS/Remote Sensing (RS) technologies for sustainable forest management, monitoring and control.

Prior to joining GFW, he spent four years in Cameroon working as a GIS officer for the Mount Cameroon project in the field of Biodiversity Conservation and Management and for the Limbé Botanical and Zoological Garden (LBZG) as GIS/RS Lab Manager. While at LBZG, he advised management, wrote proposals, and developed contacts through which the lab acquired both GIS/RS facilities and the services of GIS/RS volunteers. The lab provided services (mapping, satellite image processing and interpretation, GIS trainings) to government services, biodiversity conservation projects, logging companies, local and international NGOs.

Nsoyuni is National Coordinator for OSFAC in Cameroon and has coordinated workshops for GIS/RS practitioners in Cameroon. He played an instrumental role in the development of the Information System on the Biodiversity of Cameroon (SIBC) funded by the World Bank.

Nsoyuni received a Master's degree in Environmental Systems Analysis and Monitoring from the International Institute for Geo-information Science - The Netherlands where he majored in the application of GIS/RS for Natural Resources Management. He also has a Bachelor's degree in Geography from the University of Yaoundé 1 Cameroon.

Expertise: Cameroon forest sector, technical capacity building for forest monitoring management and control, geographic information systems, monitoring logging roads with remote sensing, forest data and information databases, biodiversity

E-mail: ayenikal@iucn.org

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Lesley Pories

Program Coordinator

E-mail: lpories@wri.org

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Janet Ranganathan

Director of the People and Ecosystems Program

Janet Ranganathan is the Director of WRI's Biological Resources Program. The goal of the program is to reverse the rapid degradation of ecosystems and assure their capacity to provide humans with needed goods and services. Janet works extensively with business, government and other stakeholders to catalyze changes in the way ecosystems are managed. Prior to becoming program director Janet directed WRI's Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, an international multi-stakeholder partnership convened by WRI and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, for the purpose of developing international greenhouse gas accounting and reporting standards, as well as WRI's Learning and leading by doing and SafeClimate.net projects. Janet has also worked on business environmental performance measurement and environmental accounting.

Janet's publications include the Greenhouse Gas Protocol: a corporate accounting and reporting standard (first and revised edition); Tomorrows Markets: Global trends and their implications for business; Measuring Up: Toward a Common Framework for Tracking Corporate Environmental Performance and Green Ledgers: Case Studies in Corporate Environmental Accounting.

Prior to joining WRI she worked on business and environmental issues in the U.K. both as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and in a regulatory capacity with the Department of Environment and Hertfordshire Waste Regulatory Authority. Janet Ranganathan received a BSc. (Hons) from Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London in 1983, and an MSc. with distinction in Environmental Technology from Imperial College in 1990. Janet was born and raised in Cornwall, England. She is married to Kumar and has two daughters Angela and Serena.

Expertise: WRI's People and Ecosystems work which includes: agriculture subsidies, biofuels, coral reefs and coastal management in the Caribbean, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Hypoxia in North America, poverty and ecosystem services

E-mail: janetr@wri.org

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Gideon Neba Shu

Program Assistant, GIS/Remote Sensing -- Central Africa

Gideon joined Global Forest Watch in December 2005 as project assistant for GFW Cameroon-WRI Central Africa Program. He has field experience in the tropical rain forests of Cameroon, Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic and is conversant with the Cameroonian forestry policy.

Before joining the GFW team, Neba Shu worked for Mount Cameroon Darwin Initiative Project in Limbe-Cameron, the Tropenbos Cameroon Programme collecting and analyzing baseline data for the development of sustainable forest management strategies in Cameroon. He occupied the position of GIS/RS officer for the Department of Forest Management, Vicwood Thanry from 2003-2005 where he developed and managed a spatial database for the company. He equally produced maps for various forest management purposes and trained colleagues in the use of the GPS and ArcView software.

Gideon holds an MSc. degree in Rural Land ecology from the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth observation (ITC), The Netherlands; a BSc degree in Botany obtained from the University of Buea in Cameroon.

Fields of expertise: applications of GIS/RS in the Management of Natural Resources, tropical forest inventories, forest management and mapping.

E-mail: gideon.nebashu@iucn.org

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Matt Steil

Associate - Central Africa

Expertise: Gabon, GIS, Central Africa

E-mail: msteil@wri.org

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Fred Stolle

Project Manager - Southeast Asia

Fred Stolle is an Associate II project manager for Global Forest Watch for the Southeast Asia region. Fred comes to us with extensive technical and regional expertise. He worked with spatial information related to land use issues in developing countries for over 10 years. He started working at the International Institute for Aerospace survey in the Netherlands after which he joined UNEP/GRID in Nairobi. After a 2 years stay in UNEP he changed to UNESCO in Jakarta to work on forestry issues in Indonesia. He stayed there 4 years working subsequently for the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) as head of their spatial analysis lab, and later as specialist on spatial information in a combined project of ICRAF and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). His expertise spans management of project on spatial data as well spatial research and field investigations. He returned to Europe to do do his PhD at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and was awarded a PhD in Geography with great distinction (thesis on underlying causes of fire a spatial study on causes and impacts of fires in Indonesia) in 2003.

Expertise: Southeast Asia forest sector, palm oil sector, monitoring with satellites in tropical areas, global forest cover change mapping, World Bank Indonesia, UN Environment Program, World Agroforestry Centre, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

E-mail: fstolle@wri.org

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