Marielos Peña Claros studied in Brazil and the United States, and received her PhD at Utrecht University. She has worked at the chair group Forest Ecology and Forest Management in Wageningen since 2010. “I studied Biology and thought that everything was interesting. But after I took part of expeditions with a number of American top experts to remote forests in Bolivia, I knew: this is it. Then I started to specialise in forest ecology. First, the focus was mainly on forest protection. Later it shifted to the use of the forest, and the restoration of production forests. The connection between the forest and the people is central to finding ways to manage forests sustainably. I want to contribute to that.”
Large areas of tropical forest are being lost worldwide. In the process, a lot of CO2 that is stored in the forests is released, which leads to additional climate warming. This means that the protection of rainforests and reforestation are essential. Wageningen ecologists are conducting research in South America into…