Kwangho Baek works for the Korea Forest Service in Daejeon City, Korea. He has been employed there for more than 17 years in various different positions including Planning and Finance, Inspection, and Legislative Affairs in the forest sector. Mr. Baek started at the World Forest Institute in January 2011 for an 18-month Fellowship to study the utilization of forest biomass in the Pacific Northwest. He will look at Oregon in particular, which is one of the most active states using biomass for power generation. Due to global warming and the high price of fossil fuels, many countries are looking at renewable energy resources such as wind, sunlight, tides, and biomass. Today, Korea tries to find ways to use small diameter timbers to activate the community economy, protect the environment, and produce energy. The knowledge and experience gained from his study here will be helpful for creating and implementing forest management plans in Korea.

Dr. Ning Hou is a lecturer at Beijing Forestry University, where she has been teaching forestry economics and management for the past 9 years. As a teacher and forestry specialist, Ning is involved in many forestry projects and concentrates especially on community forestry and forestry carbon credit issues. She was awarded a grant by the China Scholarship Council as an elite youth teacher from the university to study abroad and gain both academic and cultural experience. Ning will spend one year at WFI doing a comparative study on forestry carbon credit markets in US and China. Although there are increasing international practices in forestry carbon credit around the world, few examples can be found   in China. Her research at WFI will focus on carbon credit models and case studies which she hopes will provide some valuable recommendations on improving   forestry   carbon   credit market institutional measures for China.

Elvis Tata is a high school teacher from the Advanced Teachers’ Training College-ENS Yaoundé, Cameroon. He holds a Post Graduate Teachers’ Diploma and a Bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of Yaoundé. He is currently registered into a professional Masters Degree program in the department of Geography and Forest/Environmental studies at the university of Douala-Cameroon. Elvis has done considerable research works on forest inventory and agriculture with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN)–Cameroon. As a Farmer Field School Facilitator and enumerator, he worked in all cocoa producing areas of the country. While at the World Forest Institute, Elvis will be carrying out a 6-month analytical study to assess how geo-information technology has contributed to the sustainable forest resource management in the Pacific Northwest. He will use this knowledge to inform resource managers here and in Cameroon on best practices and potential policy updates in this field.

Ali Malekghasemi is an assistant professor in the forestry department at Azad University in Iran. He completed his Ph.D in 2010 and his thesis was about using remote sensing & GIS methodologies in monitoring urban forests in Iran (Tehran). He has been teaching GIS, aerial photo interpretation, vegetation remote sensing, tree measurement and urban forestry for the past 6 years. As a university teacher and researcher, Ali is involved in many forestry related projects and concentrates specifically on using High Spatial Resolution Satellite Imageries (IKONOS & QuickBird) and GIS spatial analysis in managing and monitoring urban forests. One of his interests for future research will be using various kinds of vegetation indices in monitoring urban forest health. Ali will spend six month at WFI doing a comparative study on quantitative assessments of urban forests in Iran (Tehran) and PNW of the USA. Managing urban forests in Tehran is not an easy task and it needs special considerations because urban trees are under a lot of stress such as air pollution and Urban Heated Island effects (UHI), especially in summers. Having a good knowledge about the way the urban forests are being assessed in the PNW and also exchanging knowledge and experiences during this six month period will be a good asset for any researcher in the field of urban forestry in Iran.

Richard O’Hanlon is a forest ecologist and mycologist from Ireland. He holds a Bachelors degree in Science education and a PhD in Forest Ecology from the Department of Life sciences, University of Limerick, where he was also a member of the laboratory teaching staff. His PhD research focused on the macrofungal communities of Irish forests. Some of the findings from this project were that non-native tree species like Sitka spruce could support very species rich macorfungal communities in Ireland, thus indicating that plantation forests may have a part to play in fungal conservation. He is also interested in the below-ground ectomycorrhizal communities of forests, and the relationship between both above- and below-ground fungal communities. Richard has also led a number of fungal forays over the past number of years in Irish forests in order to raise interest in fungi, both edible and otherwise. His 6 month research project at WFI will investigate the macrofungal communities of Sitka spruce in its native and non-native ranges. Macrofungal datasets from Ireland and Britain have been recently compiled, and these along with fungal records for Sitka spruce forests from the Pacific Northwest’s (PNW) many Mycological societies will be analyzed with a view to finding if similarities exist in the macrofungal communities of Sitka spruce worldwide. As Sitka spruce has become the most planted tree species in Ireland and Britain, information regarding the ecology of these non-native forests is important for biodiversity conservation and future planting policy. His research is part funded by the Council for Forest Research and Development (COFORD).