About the Authors

Günther Fischer is the leader of a major research project at IIASA on Modelling Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Europe and Northern Asia (LUC). A primary research objective of this project is the development of a GIS-based modelling framework, which combines economic theory and advanced mathematical methods with biophysical land evaluation approaches to model spatial and dynamic aspects of land-resources use. He was a member of the IGBP-HDP Core Project Planning Committee on Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC), and is a co-author of the LUCC Science Plan. He serves on the Scientific Steering Committee of the joint LUCC Core Project/Program of the IGBP-IHDP, and leads the LUCC Focus 3 office at IIASA.

E-Mail: fisher@iiasa.ac.at

Harrij van Velthuizen has over twenty years experience in applied land resources ecology. He was member of the working group that developed FAO's Agro-Ecological Zones Methodology (AEZ). As senior consultant and chief technical advisor van Velthuizen has been working for projects on agro-ecological assessments for agricultural development planning in countries in Asia, Africa and South America. Since 1995, van Velthuizen has been working closely with the IIASA-Land Use Change Project on enhancement of the AEZ methodologies and various applications for the Former Soviet Union, China, Bangladesh, Kenya and Nigeria and at the global level. Recently he has also been serving as land resources ecologist in a FAO/UNDP project concerned with Utilization of Agro-ecological Zones Databases at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, and as advisor agro-ecological zoning in a DANIDA/World Bank project on Environmental Information Systems Development in Ghana.

E-Mail: velt@iiasa.ac.at

Freddy Nachtergaele is an agronomist who has been working for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome as a Technical Officer for Soil Resources and Land Classification with the Land and Water Development Division since 1989. Prior to that he was a land resources expert for FAO in field projects in North and East Africa and in Southeast Asia. He is Vice-Chairman of the IUSS working group on the World Reference Base for Soil Resources, and coordinates the update of the FAO/UNESCO Soil Map of the World at FAO. He is the author of numerous scientific articles in the field of agro-ecological zoning, land evaluation, land-use planning and soil classification.

E-Mail: freddy.nachtergaele@fao.org

Serge Medow is a senior computer systems analyst at IIASA, and the technical designer and implementer of this Global AEZ WebSite/CD-ROM. He is involved in maintaining the Institute's web-pages, and developing various software applications. He has been providing computer support and consultation on software and hardware to the scientific community at IIASA for the last 20 years, and has held a range of different computer-related positions including; Systems Programmer, Software Project Leader, and Computer Services Department Head. He has also worked as a Research Assistant to the Resource and Environment Area within the Institute. In 1982 he has been the main consultant for the development and creation of a new computer center for the Arid Zone System Analysis Project (ASZA) at Saltillo, Mexico.

E-Mail: serge@iiasa.ac.at