S. Ellen MACDONALD has dedicated her career to the study of the ecology of the boreal forest. Her work includes studies on the patterns of diversity and composition in northern plant communities, responses of northern plant communities to natural and anthropogenic disturbance, effects of forest management practices on understory plant communities as well as the restoration, regeneration and dynamics of boreal forests after disturbance.

Her research has given original new information on the ecology of this highly important natural resource. This information is of vital importance for developing sustainable management for Canada’s boreal forests. Thus, her research is not only of very high academic value, but is having a very positive impact on the sustainable development of society as a whole. Her research was published in 128 peer-reviewed journal articles and one book chapter, and presented in numerous invited talks to the scientific community, government and industry.

Ellen Macdonald is also an esteemed teacher and mentor. She has supervised over 50 graduate students and 7 post-doctoral fellows, a whole new generation of experts and researchers, and in this way her work will radiate far into the future. Her students are working both in academia and in forestry companies, so that the new ideas and knowledge have benefited both education and practical forestry.

José Leonardo de MORAES GONÇALVES' significant, systematic and long term contributions over the last three decades have advanced multi-disciplinary forest science and its application, underpinning the sustainable management of short rotation plantation forests, especially soil and site management of eucalypts, in diverse sub-tropical and tropical environments. He has an outstanding record of long term partnerships with the Brazilian forestry sector and has built enduring and deep collaborations with both Brazilian and international scientific colleagues (notably with CIRAD, France and CSIRO, Australia). As an academic and teacher, he has trained and enthused a generation of students, researchers and managers about Brazil.

The research results and tireless efforts in promoting practical applications of science-based solutions have enabled the adoption of improved management practices in some 90% of the eucalypt plantations, lifting their productivity and ecosystem sustainability in Brazil. By sharing science through prolific publications and invited lectures at conferences, undertaking advisory roles and participating in IUFRO activities, his research outcomes are having scientific and practical impacts beyond Brazil, especially elsewhere in South America.

Maria NIJNIK has developed novel ways of stakeholder evaluation of landscape change, conceptualised multi-functional forestry by explaining the heterogeneity of attitudes to woodlands, and provided empirical evidence of the cost-effectiveness and social acceptability of forest plantations. The afforestation scenarios developed for Ukraine, the deconstruction of the sources of leakage and livelihood outcomes of reforestation in Mexico, suggestions on whether carbon accounting can promote economic development in indigenous communities of BC, Canada, and other scientific outputs can serve as a basis for improved decision-making processes, contributing to the reinforcement of sustainable rural/climate policies, and forest management practices. She also showed that, especially where markets and existing institutions fail, social innovation as a means of delivering support to people (e.g. forestdependent communities) can help to strengthen the resilience of socio-ecological systems.

Maria Nijnik has made outstanding contributions to the investigation of emerging developments in forestry, including bio-economy (concerning wood and non-wood forest products), evaluation of ecosystem services and green accounting, and socio-economic (including institutional and governance) aspects of tackling climate change (in Scotland, the UK, several other countries, and internationally, e.g. under CDM, REDD, REDD+). Her scientific accomplishments also cover social and economic aspects of terrestrial carbon sequestration and storage, as well as climate change adaptation.

David J. NOWAK is a pioneer in the field of urban forest science and understanding. Author to over 300 publications, a renowned and highly sought after international speaker and keynote, David Nowak has and continues to be at the forefront of revealing the importance of urban trees.

His work with the USDA Forest Service stretches across the fundamentals of tree biometrics and growth to the quantification and valuation of many of the ecosystem service benefits of trees – including air pollution removal, carbon sequestration and storage, effects on building energy use, reductions in ultraviolet radiation, and oxygen production. He has developed methods and protocols for assessing urban forests from both ground-based and aerial approaches, and has used these to improve urban forest management. This research has set the global standard for assessing and valuing urban forests and is helping to improve the health and well-being of urban residents across the world. His research assesses current conditions, as well as provides a means to assess change, and – as much as each of these areas of research are valuable in their own right - he has also been central to the development of the freely available and easy-to-use i-Tree modelling system (www.itreetools.org) to assess the ecosystem services and values from both urban and rural forests.

Elena PAOLETTI is a world leader in forest protection and forest health responses to climate change. Her work at the leading edge of forest science focuses on understanding mechanisms of action and effects of climate change factors on the forest environment; on developing new methods for exposing whole trees to ozone pollution and for monitoring ozone and climate change impacts on forests; and on improving global awareness of the environmental risks of climate change.

The Italian scientist is a well-known expert on integrated impacts of air pollution and climate change on forest ecosystems, stomatal responses to various stressors, climate threats to the Mediterranean forest ecosystems, effects of ozone on urban forests, and exchanges of ozone in the forest ecosystem-atmosphere systems. This vast knowledge has helped her in developing science-informed initiatives against the impacts of climate change on forests at the local and global scales. Her vision and the consensus-building skills were instrumental in developing innovative approaches to the integrated forest monitoring.

Elena Paoletti is a prolific writer and science communicator. She has an impressive publishing record including books, peer-reviewed articles and reports. She has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers in national and international journals, including some seminal review papers, with an impressive h-index of 41. Very few scientists have the scientific credentials and exemplify the IUFRO spirit to Elena Paoletti’s extent.

Marielos PEÑA-CLAROS' research has focussed on the development of guidelines for management of tropical forests, based on analysis and understanding of growth rates, and regeneration ecology of tropical trees. She has developed this field of research by linking production ecology of tree growth to management interventions such as polycyclic cutting cycles or target tree diameter harvesting and low-impact logging.

There are only few researchers world-wide working on this, and it is an extremely important field in view of conservation of tropical forest ecosystems through sustainable use. Management of tropical forests in the past has been mainly approached in an empirical way, essentially by trial and error, with only little consideration of the ecology of the species present. Gradually, efforts are being made to include species ecology (ecophysiology, silvics, regeneration ecology) in management systems that include regeneration and maintenance of species composition. This has been the main focus of the work of Marielos Peña Claros, and she is currently expanding this to include resilience and recovery of forest ecosystems in the tropics after disturbance, with forests viewed as socio-ecological systems, and taking into account biodiversity, carbon relations, and historical forest use.

Marielos Peňa Claros has been working in a range of different projects and in different capacities, both in research coordination as well as in research projects as principal investigator, and serves as an outstanding role model for young researchers, both from Latin America and from elsewhere.

Terence C.H. SUNDERLAND is a prominent leader in tropical forest research. He has made large contributions across a wide range of disciplines, from his early research in tropical forest botany to blazing a new field of research at the intersection of food and forests, fields that until now have been entirely separate disciplines. His research has furthered conservation planning and practice in the tropics, and strives to improve the landscapes and livelihoods of tropical forest communities.

His breadth of experience, from extensive on-the-ground research in Africa and Asia to leading strategic international forestry initiatives, has given him unique insights and perspectives. He has also been a leader in the development of the landscape approach of conservation and development, and is now working to operationalize this approach on the ground.

Terence C.H. Sunderland has published extensively, and his many high-quality papers and books are highly cited. He has also been a master of communication, extending his findings to wider audiences through a diverse range of outlets and types of media.

Margarida TOMÉ has contributed innovative research in the fields of forest biometrics, inventory and forest modelling, which have translated into both theoretical and practical achievements in science. She has inspired the for-est modelling community for over 30 years, with a strong impact in the creation of important research groups in forest inventory and modelling in Portugal and Spain.

The results of her research have been used by researchers worldwide, and she has been hosting and supporting national and foreign young researchers for the past 20 years. She has also been an exemplary mentor to students. Over the years, she supervised 40 graduate, over 40 master and close to 10 PhD students. In this work, she has, among other things, promoted equal opportunities for women in forest science much before it has become a general requirement. Her international recognition led her to be invited as a scientific evaluator of foreign faculties, research programs and international research centres.

Daowei ZHANG is a world-renowned forest economist, who has made outstanding contributions that have national, regional and global impacts. His research focuses on economics and policy of forest management, especially property rights, political economy, forest products trade and foreign direct investment, institutional timberland ownerships, land use change, forest finance, and planted forest development. His work has contributed enormously to ad-vance forest research in these areas.

Daowei Zhang has contributed to and is an authority on most important policy matters affecting North America and beyond in the last 50 years, including the Spotted Owl issue, the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber trade dispute, and the rising of institutional timberland ownerships. Concerning property rights, he was a pioneer at showing empirically the impact of forest tenure on silvicultural investment, reforestation, and forest sustainability. His recommendations for forest tenure reform in 2001 were implemented by the Chinese government around 2007-2009. Similarly, by providing empirical evidence, his call for changing volume-based tenure to area-based tenure in British Columbia, Canada, continues to gain public support. He has been a true innovator in the application of public choice theory in various forest policies and legislations. He is also an authority on foreign direct investment in forest industry, a subject he has studied since the later 1980s. His co-authored Forest Economics textbook has been published in English, Chinese and Russian and is being translated into Spanish, and is used by more than 40 universities in five continents.

Currently he is delving into several important research topics that have broad policy implications around the world, namely, the economics of ecosystem restoration, payments for ecosystem services, and forest laws and regulations that aim at improving forest governance and reducing illegal logging in developing countries.

Junyong ZHU’s research has contributed to the advancement of wood utilization. In his early work, he developed analytical capabilities to reduce bleaching chemicals, air emission of volatile organic compounds in pulp mills, and fiber yield loss in paper recycling. He has also conducted research to understand the anatomical properties of suppressed-growth trees in U.S. national forests. Both the analytical chemistry and wood anatomy research have provided practical tools for pulp mills and solutions for utilization of otherwise underutilized wood from forest thinning, with both efforts incentivizing forest operations to reduce forest fires in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

His research in woody biomass bioconversion promoted the development of forest biorefinery, a potential avenue for large-volume use of forest biomass. Furthermore, the SPORL process he co-developed was used to produce iso-paraffinic kerosene for the world’s first successful woody biojet fuel commercial flight. As the woody biojet fuel was produced from the very recalcitrant softwood forest residues and a variety of other types of feedstocks, the success of his demonstration flight impacted the biomass supply and biorefinery technology landscape as well as future forest management. This success also demonstrates the importance of Junyong Zhu’s work to forestry in regions with an abundance of softwoods, such as North America, Nordic countries, Australia, and New Zealand.

His work on economical and sustainable production of cellulose nanomaterials supports high-value wood utilization. Both biojet fuels and cellulose nanomaterials will play important roles in a biorefinery product portfolio that will contribute to the long-term success of forest biorefineries and expand the market for renewable woody materials.

Angela L. de AVILA dedicated her doctoral research to investigating the resilience of tropical rain forests to management interventions, i.e. how silvicultural intervention intensity and type (selection harvesting and thinning) influences the recovery of important for-est attributes and functions such as biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and timber provisioning.

Based on repeated inventory data from a well-designed long-term experiment on the intensity of forest management in the Tapajós National Forest in the Brazilian Amazon, she analysed the recovery of tree species diversity, forest carbon stocks and the timber potential over the period of a conventional logging cycle of 30 years. Her comprehensive study demonstrated that tree
species composition, biomass and commercial timber stocks could recover, provided that basal area reductions through harvesting and thinning did not exceed 20% of the original level.

Thus, she identified an important threshold to guide future management. Her research approach provides a blueprint for future analyses of long-term management experiments in tropical forests to study the influence of disturbances on the recovery of important ecosystem services.

In her dissertation Sarah L. BURNS evaluated how inter- and transnational organizations influence domestic forest policy. Empirically, she focused on the World Bank and forest certification organizations and their influence on Argentina and Armenia, two developing countries due to restructuration in a time of weak forest governance open for policy change and influence from the international level. As a result she published four papers as first author in highly acknowledged international scientific journals including Land Use Policy, World Development and Society and Natural Resources.

Moreover, she co-authored two additional papers, including a meta-analysis of agriculture and forest certification processes in Argentina and Indonesia.

The most innovative and original finding of Sarah L. Burns’ doctoral research has been to reveal that the interplay between international and domestic actors determines the implementation of international and transnational regimes, and the political system of federal countries provides multiple institutional access points for policy change that international and transnational regimes try to use in order to influence the domestic level, consequently changing the power balance of the domestic networks.

Andrea HEVIA CABAL’s research has been carried out in a novel network of permanent plots for major timber conifers of Spain (one of the few silvicultural experiments for wood quality in Europe). The aims of her work were to design different silviculture strategies and forest modelling approaches to optimize forest management with a view to wood quality and reducing the risk of fire and related impacts on the forest ecosystem (nutrients, carbon). Previous to this PhD work, forest management of conifers for timber quality was scarce in the Atlantic region (South of Europe). In addition, the study region has a high risk of wildfires, which is directly related to the silviculture methods applied.

For her research, Andrea Hevia Cabal was responsible for establishing, coordinating, monitoring and collecting field data, and processing the information for discussing with the regional government, public forest research institutions, as well as private forest companies and universities in northern Spain. She has developed forest models to define and assess optimal silvicultural systems based on this network of permanent plots, which is now the study site in several national and European projects, and provides a long-term data series which has unique value in forest research. She also contributed to the advancement of knowledge through novel research activities in dendrochronology, microdensitometry and micro-XRF for forest and environmental sciences, and promoted a better understanding of these fields within the scientific community.

Verónica F. LOEWE MUÑOZ’ doctoral thesis presents and develops a wide experimental study based on stone pine (Pinus pinea L.) plantations in Chile. The applied methodology in-
cludes innovative techniques for statistical and analytic analyses, oriented to the growth, fruiting and variability studies, in particular. For the first time for the species two advanced techniques were used: Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) for identifying pine nut geographical origin, and proteomics to differentiate stone pine populations.

Overall, the scientific results obtained have confirmed the general hypothesis of this thesis, i.e., stone pine is well adapted to the soil and climate of Chile within a wide range of environmental conditions, and has a production capacity that allows predicting productive levels similar to or higher than those in its native habitat, which makes the species cultivation an important productive alternative for the country and for other countries with similar environmental conditions.

Loewe’s doctoral thesis made a valuable scientific contribution to the advancement of stone pine knowledge in several aspects relevant for its domestication, opening new research topics that should be addressed in the future. All these efforts have contributed to the establishment of over 1,000 hectares of new plantations for pine nut production in Chile between 2014 and 2018.

Lichao JIAO’s research work is focused on the important research field of DNA-based wood identification. The knowledge about wood identification and origin of internationally traded timber is of prime importance to timber trade and wood industry. Furthermore, wood identification is very important in enforcing the promotion of legal logging according to international or regional timber regulations, such as CITES policies, EUTR and Chinese national regulations.

Jiao systematically investigated the new method of wood identification based on DNA barcode. He developed effective DNA extraction protocols from wood materials that have undergone drying treatments of long-term storage, and screening out the suitable DNA barcodes for wood species identification. A reference library of wood DNA barcodes was also constructed based on xylarium wood specimens, which will accelerate the application of the DNA barcode method to support wood species conservation worldwide. This is a significant contribution to breaking through the technical bottleneck of traditional methods based on wood anatomy that could not or only with difficulty identify wood on the species level.

Rubén VALBUENA pursued a novel and ground-breaking viewpoint to the topic of forest structure characterization in his doctoral work. He has developed adaptations of Lorenz curve methods to forest science, with applications in the use of LIDAR to study ecosystem structural parameters. Such computational methods are becoming extremely useful in environmental monitoring and could be used in ecological modelling. His conclusions were grounded on a strong theoretical basis. He also fostered the applications of LIDAR in forest structure assessment, and worked on the practical methods needed to make them a reality.

Rubén Valbuena is also currently doing excellent work in fostering the outreach of his doctoral work within the Group of Earth Observations – Biodiversity Observation network (GEO BON) working group for Ecosystem Structure. In the future, these efforts may capitalize on the practical use of LIDAR forest indicators in decision making and policies.

Ida WALLIN’s thesis "Forest Management and Governance in Sweden – A Phronetic Analysis of Social Practices" has shed light on the complex and poorly understood drivers behind the behaviour of private forest owners.

She investigated and even instigated multi-stakeholder participatory processes in forest governance. The top-down and bottom-up social processes that determine how forests are managed are still poorly understood. Research tends to have either a governance or a management perspective leading to a lack of understanding about the connections between the two. In the face of increased pressure on forest resources due to climate change and higher societal demand for renewable forest goods and services, there is now, more than ever, a need to find valid policy solutions that take into account institutional, political and societal restraints.

Ida Wallin‘s work has contributed to closing the knowledge gap regarding what determines how the forest is managed and how governance is grounded in local processes. In finding answers to these questions and through teaching and engagement in participatory processes, she has contributed to finding new pathways and policy solutions to pressing challenges of sustainability in forest management and governance.

Zhen YU made outstanding contributions to the fundamental understanding of climate change impacts on carbon and water cycles in forests.

His research focuses on forest service assessments via evaluation of biophysical responses (ecosystem albedo, structure, and phenology) and biochemical responses (e.g. ecosystem GPP, NPP, NEE, evapotranspiration) to climate change and human disturbances.

The four major aspects that he investigated include: quantification of the responses of terrestrial ecosystem phenology to climate change, which helps to reduce uncertainties of biosphere-atmosphere carbon exchange; simulation of the biogeochemical cycle in forest ecosystems; assessment of the differences of planted and natural forests in carbon sequestration and water consumption; and development of innovative approaches for assessing the impacts of drought/heat stress to ecosystem services/health.
His excellent work on this topic has already resulted in more than ten high quality papers and presentations. Specifically, his dissertation has been published in prestigious journals, such as Global Change Biology, Global Ecology and Biogeography, and Environmental Research Letters.

René ZAMORA-CRISTALES’ work comprises an innovative development of a decision support framework for forest harvest residue collection, transport, and conversion, contributions to software development, contributions to advance costing of machine interactions, and careful data collection, analysis, and model validation efforts which have resulted in 12 peer reviewed journal articles directly related to his dissertation topic.

Public and private institutions around the globe are interested in reducing their dependence on fossil fuels. As noted in René Zamora’s dissertation – Economic optimisation of forest biomass processing and transport for aviation biofuel – “the production of energy from forest harvest residues constitutes an opportunity to develop a supply chain for producing heat, electricity and liquid fuels from renewable materials”. Aviation fuels derived from forest biomass must compete with traditional fossil fuel supply chains.

Zamora’s research addresses the economic optimisation of an important component of the forest to aviation fuel supply chain. His path-breaking research combines operational and tactical planning methods, as well as simulation, in a decision support system. He developed a mixed integer programming/simulation solution procedure to provide support to biomass processing and transportation decisions at the operational level, taking into account operational factors not considered in previous models; such as residue pile location, road characteristics, turnaround and turn-out location, processing and transportation equipment available, and truck-machine interactions. He also developed an innovative costing model for the standing cost of equipment.

Shankar ADHIKARI has made an outstanding contribution with his Master's thesis on "Connecting Nature to People: Ecosystem Services in Adaptation to Climate Changes, Insights from the Panchase Mountain Ecological Region (PMER) of Western Nepal". Applying the IPBES conceptual framework, Shankar Adhikari investigated the role of ecosystem services (ES) in the context of human well-being and climate change adaptation in forest-dependent communities of the PMER region of Nepal.

Through his research, he has filled the important information gap in ecosystem services and climate adaptation, which is of critical relevance to developing countries like Nepal that are rich in ecosystem services and where most people are dependent on forest ecosystem services for their livelihoods.

As a continuing demonstration of his commitment to ecosystem services and climate adaptation research, he is actively engaged in the IUFRO Task Force on Forest Adaptation and Restoration under Global Change. He is now working on developing a Climate Resilient Forest Management System (CRFMS) in collaboration with other stakeholders in Nepal.

Katharina ALBRICH’s outstanding thesis "Effects of forest management on the provisioning of ecosystem services under climate change in a mountain forest landscape" tackles a highly timely and relevant topic, namely how essential ecosystem services can be provided from forests in an increasingly uncertain future.

She investigates contrasting management approaches with regard to their capability to provide ecosystem services. She uses a highly innovative simulation approach to quantify the robustness of alternative management strategies to climate change, finding variable responses across the four ecosystem services she assessed. A particularly important finding was that temporal stability can be enhanced through silvicultural measures, but that trade-offs between stability and the level of ecosystem services provisioning exist.

She has also special interest in promoting science communication and outreach, and forestry education, all well documented by her collaboration in the International Forestry Students‘ Association (IFSA) for several years.

Shourav DUTTA conducted a successful thesis on "Effects of mixed plantations of Acacia auriculiformis with Swietenia macrophylla and Gmelina arborea on growth, biomass and soil fertility". His innovative research about forests, soil and water interactions has advantages over natural forests from both management and economic points of view. His research interest is focused on the sustainable management of tropical plantations along with the promotion of ecological stability in forest stands. He showed how to increase the biomass yields of established plantations through replacement of pure stands by mixed plantations.

His thesis has developed effective plantation patterns of tropical mixed plantations and showed a diligent interaction among forest, soil and water, which has significant aspects for the sustainable management of tropical forest in the near future. His work is also focused on the selection of tree species for different plantation sites. He successfully investigated the effect of mixed plantings of nitrogen fixing tree species with non-nitrogen fixing trees on their growth, biomass and soil fertility at several plantation sites. Currently, he is conducting research about climate change effects and drought influence on the performance of temperate tree species in central Europe.

Ange RAHARIVOLOLONIAINA performed a study on the projected climate change threats to the protected areas of the whole island of Madagascar using sophisticated modelling techniques and geostatistical approaches. These protected areas are the last reserves of forest ecosystems on this highly diverse and unique but also very large island.

Managing to carry out such a general study of national range, she paved the road for an excellent career in science, and also contributed to the development of coping and adaptation strategies for her home country. Currently, she is working on a manuscript to publish her studies and to gain international visibility in the scientific community. This study is not only timely and relevant, it is urgently needed as the pressures of human population growth and related land use changes combined with the increasing impacts of climate change are threatening these last remnants of fascinating forests.

Among Ange Raharivololoniaina’s personal interests are promoting science-based solutions and interdisciplinary cooperation in order to influence decision making and donor or finance institutions to finance relevant projects in Africa, especially in countries that are in urgent need of financial and technical support.

Andrea M. VÁSQUEZ FERNÁNDEZ wrote her Master thesis on "Indigenous Federations in the Peruvian Amazon: Perspectives from Ashéninka and Yine-Yami peoples". With her thesis she demonstrated an impressive commitment to intercultural collaboration between indigenous communities/institutions and Peruvian institutions, as well as a strong commitment to Canadian research ethics and the rigors of academic professionalism.

Andrea Vásquez Fernández was invited by indigenous community members to continue collaboration, which shows the significance of the research processes and results for the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples. In numerous ways her Master's research builds (such as indigenous collaboration, innovative research processes and models as well as research agendas) into her proposed dissertation research called "Addressing conflicts through understanding of 'respect': A collaborative research with two Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon".

Khalil WALJI has been proactive in continuing to collaborate and enhance the outreach of both soil and forest sciences along with pushing strongly for enhanced methods in forest education.

His project, "Sustainable Forest Management and Soil Quality: An Enhanced Virtual Education Experience", generously supported by the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), capitalized on international collaboration between two internationally recognized forest research institutions, UBC and Stellenbosch University, as well as the forestry, soils and water nexus to create an immersive, enriched student educational experience with the creation of an open source forest and soil management case study.

The project utilized enriched media (360 photography, augmented reality, drone footage, 4K footage) for students to gain international exposure to various methods of sustainable forest management and the resulting impact on soil and water conservation. The project has developed a problem-based case study, to be utilized in the curriculum in the fall term by both institutions, by upper level undergraduate and graduate students to gain a better understanding of forest ecosystems and SFM practices in South Africa in comparison to Canadian examples.

The Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) will provide the Wangari Maathai award to one extraordinary individual for improving our forests and the lives of people who depend on them!

This award honors and commemorates the impact of this extraordinary woman who championed forest issues around the world. The awardee will receive a cash prize of USD 20,000 along with international recognition of his/her outstanding contributions to preserve, restore, and sustainably manage forests; and to raise awareness of the key role forests play in supporting local communities, rural livelihoods, women and the environment.

The Wangari Maathai Award, given for the first time in 2012, was created by CBD, CIFOR, FAO, GEF, ICRAF, ITTO, IUCN, IUFRO, UNCCD, UNDP, UNEP, UNFCCC, UNFF and World Bank; all members of the CPF.

The 2019 award will be presented at the IUFRO World Congress in Curitiba, Brazil on Monday, 30 September at 18:00 hours. You are kindly invited to the ceremony! Further information will be published in due course.