Dr. Raul Ponce-Hernandez is an Associate Professor in the Environmental and Resource Studies Program and the Department of Geography at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and director of the Applied Geomatics, Remote Sensing and Land Resources Laboratory of that university. He specializes and instructs courses which focus on Geographical Information Systems, spatial modelling, remote sensing and image interpretation, soil management and conservation, and watershed management in developing countries.He has extensive experience in land resources assessment and the application of modeling, GIS and RS techniques to natural resource inventory, assessment and planning. Dr. Ponce-Hernandez holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree with emphasis in Land Resources, Spatial Analysis, GIS and Remote Sensing from the University of Oxford (U.K.) and is the author of various major publications and reports on land resources assessment for land use planning, ecological and economic zoning and planning, the assessment and modeling of the dynamics of carbon in biomass and soils, and on the methodological development of land degradation assessment in drylands, mainly in Latin America, The Caribbean, Southeast Africa and the Middle East for FAO of UN, UNEP, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty and UN-ESCWA respectively. He has participated in the UNEP’s Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-4) process as lead author in Chapter 3 “Lands”, concentrating particularly in the issues of land degradation, soil erosion, the biologically-mediated global cycles of Carbon, Nitrogen, Sulfur, etc., and the interface of water and land resources. Currently, he is member of the Afforestation/Reforestation Working Group of the CDM of UNFCC and advices the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) on the application of a land degradation assessment in drylands methodology he designed for the region.

Dr. Raul Ponce-Hernandez's research interests include: GIS/RS research and applications to spatial modelling and process-based modelling of natural and anthropogenic phenomena (i.e. land suitability, land degradation, contaminants, terrestrial carbon cycle and other soil fertility elements, biodiversity, desertification) Design of GIS/modelling-based methods for land-use planning, ecological and economic zoning and watershed management planning Applications to agriculture and forestry, environmental assessment and natural resources planning