Next Wednesday, the Environmental Dynamics Research Domain will hold their last seminar of the year. King’s Visiting Researcher Dr Sampurno Bruijnzeel will speak on “Tropical forests, reforestation and water yield”.
Adriaan Bruijnzeel (a.k.a. Sampurno) is a Dutch national with >40 years of experience in forest hydrological and related research across the humid tropics. He read geology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) gaining his BSc degree (cum laude) in 1972 followed by an MSc degree (also cum laude) in hydrology and meteorology from the same university in 1976, having taken tropical soil science as additional subject at the University of Amsterdam. That year he moved to Indonesia to conduct field research for his doctoral dissertation on the hydrology and biogeochemistry of man-made forests in Java. Combining the latter with a part-time lecturership at VUA since 1978 teaching courses in, inter alia, soil physics and forest hydrology, he completed his thesis in January 1983. Retaining a part-time position at VUA until 1991 Sampurno conducted several extensive consultancies in the 1980s including studies on erosion and sediment yield in Java, plus commissioned literature reviews on Himalayan hydrology (ICIMOD, 1989) and tropical forest hydrology (UNESCO, 1990) before effectively becoming tenured at VUA in 1991. In 2007 he was promoted to Senior Lecturer and per 2008 to Professor of Land Use and Hydrology from which position he retired per March 2015. During his last years at VUA Sampurno led its Critical Zone Hydrology Group. In 2005 he received the Busk medal from the Royal Geographical Society (UK) for his contributions to biosphere research in the humid tropics and served as guest professor in the Distinguished International Scientist programme of the University of Pennsylvania in spring 2008. Sampurno is a long-term member of several editorial boards, including the Journal of Tropical Ecology, Hydrological Processes (until 2012), Ecohydrology, and Geo_Oekologie and acted as editor of two landmark books on Forests, Water and People in the Humid Tropics (2005) and Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (2010), both published by Cambridge University Press. He has been a member of IUCN’s Commission on Ecosystem Management since 2008 and scientific advisor to the Commonland Foundation for the regreening of degraded land since 2013. Sampurno is currently working on various publications documenting the global soil and water impacts of tropical soil degradation and reforestation as well as a new monograph on Himalayan ecohydrology.
Dr Bruijnzeel is making a special trip from the Netherlands for this seminar. He will be introducing his work to the Environmental Dynamics group and discussing potential collaborations with King’s Water researchers and others.
The event will be held Wednesday 11 May from 5pm in the Pyramid Room (4th Floor of the King’s Building in the Strand Campus). Environmental Dynamic seminars are free and open to the public, but please indicate your attendance online: http://goo.gl/LiZD4.