Participant ID: 4 - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Global Terrestrial Observing System (FAO-GTOS)
	http://www.fao.org/gtos/

Expertise and experience The Food and Agriculture Organisation is the United Nations organisation established in 1945 with a specific mandate to ensure food security for all prople of the world, to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO is also a source of knowledge and information, specifically to assist developing countries and countries in transition modernize and improve agriculture, forestry and fisheries practices and ensure good nutrition for all. FAO's activities include sharing policy expertise, putting information within reach and bringing knowledge to the field. FAO employs almost 4.000 staff, of whom around half are posted at FAO regional offices located in more than 100 countries worldwide. The organisation's skill base include experts on land cover and land degradation mapping, management of Clean Development Mechanism projects, forestry, agricultural production and rural education and training, and communication. FAO has extensive experience in running international research and capacity building projects in developing countries. The FAO will coordinate the WP on communication and capacity building, and will contribute to all of the other WPs. Role in this project WP1: Input from global observation systems GTOS and IGOS and subsidiary programmes of these, providing access to data and datasets, data management, agrometerological data, interpretation and advice. WP2: Soils and land degradation mapping, soil carbon/ process information and advice. WP3: Input from global observation systems GTOS and IGOS and subsidiary programmes of these, access and analysis of data from TEMS and linked datasets. WP4: Input from GTOS, GOFC-GOLD, FAO Wildland Fire Programme. WP5: Coordination of WP, development and maintenance of Web site, list server, networks, editing newsletter, local training courses including field components, CDM capacity building, preparation of distance learning materials, internship learning experiences. WP6: Input on CDM, carbon strategy planning, coordination with UNCCD. Principal Investigator and collaborators John Latham: a consultant and member of the staff of the FAO for 25 years, JL has a long history of involement in research, development, application, technology transfer and capacity building programmes in developing and developed countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. The focus of the work is use of information systems, geographical information systems and remotely sensed data from earth observation satellites to support environmental and natural resources management programmes. JL has particular skills in training and creating local, national or regional technical cooperation networks, and has a history of advocating design and implementation of programs that are conducive to indigenous technology development. He has been a driving force in the development of the FAO/UNEP Land Cover Classification System LCCS as a means to harmonise land cover and vegetation mapping efforts around the world, and to facilitate an improvement in the information content of mapping projects. Antonio Martucci has more than ten years experience in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing technologies to address environmental issues related to natural and agricultural resources management. With a degree in agricultural sciences, he has designed and implemented GIS at local and regional scale for the USGS in several Gulf of Mexico states. He designed and implemented dynamic Web sites enabled by spatial components (interactive mapping) and database connection, with the goal to enhance the dissemination of spatial and non-spatial information on natural resources. He designed and developed desktop GIS applications to support the decision making process for natural resources management. He teaches GIS technologies at the annual Master of the Istituto Agronomico per l'Oltremare, Florence, Italy. Currently, he is appointed as Information Systems Officer at FAO's Environment and Natural Resources Service on outreach programmes and the development of Web-based data publishing tools. Paolo Prosperi is a professional forester, with degrees in forestry from the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, and a masters degree in Geomatics and natural resources evaluation from the IAO institute, Florence. He has two years experience in agriculture and forestry planning and one year in FAO-SDRN related activities. PP is presently working at FAO as administrator of the TEMS (Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Sites) database, an international directory of in-situ sites and networks for long-term terrestrial monitoring and research activities. Information from the database will be employed in this project. TEMS is part of the GTOS programme. Freddy Nachtergale 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. Mike Jurvélius is a professional forester and has worked as a senior consultant to various UN organisations since 1976. His principal area of activity has bee fire prevention and protection. In 1993 he co-authoed the two Handbooks on Forest Fire Control for Finland. In 1994 he became a Member of the ECE/FAO Team Specialist on Forest Fire, and subsequently worked in Namibia to develop the first global landscape level Community Based Fire Management (CBFiM) programme, and the National Guidelines for Forest Fire Management; the first such guidelines for Africa, which included alegal framework for participation by local communities. MJ is a member of the Advisory Group of the UN-International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR). He retired from FAO at the end of 2005, and now works as an independent consultant, specialissin in participatory fire management with special emphasis on food security, by training local populations in controlled use of fire. Angas Hopkins is a Principal Research Scientist in Western Australia's government land management agencies, with degrees in plant ecology from the University of Queensland, and 30 years of experience in research on vegetation mapping, responses to disturbances and post-disturbance rehabilitation, land degradation, natural resources management and impacts of climate change. AH is an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at the University of Western Australia where he runs a 4th year course on rangelands ecology and management, focussing on the management of interactions between livestock and landscapes. He is particularly adept at translating scientific results into plain language and into policy. AH is presently working at FAO on the design of a Global Observation System for Land (IGOL) which will incorporate observations on land cover, land use and agricultural production (including forestry) which are relevant to this project. Example publications