Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability

I’m a graduate student from Costa Rica at San Francisco State University Department of Geography and Human Environmental Studies. My background is in forest engineering earning a B.Sc at the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica in 2003. I have been involved in several projects related to forest inventories, GIS and remote sensing for forestry and environmental management in Costa Rica and Panama.

I moved to San Francisco for graduate studies in July 2007 after receiving the Lakeside Foundation Fellowship for the master’s program in Geography. Professors Barbara Holzman, Jerry Davis and Healy Hamilton are part of my thesis committee.

My main research interest is the study of the effects of forest fragmentation on the distribution of economically important timber species in Costa Rica, and this is done though the techniques of species distribution modeling and landscape analysis. I’m also interested in the dynamics of the forest patches that gradually became isolated in the deforestation process in the countryside of Costa Rica and in developing new methods for mapping land cover in the tropics.

Guillermo Durán
(415) 508-4164 · gduran@calacademy.org

EDUCATION
Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica
B.Sc. in Forest Engineering
1998 - 2003

San Francisco State University
M.A. in Geography
concentration in Resource Management and Environmental Planning 2007 - 2009

Interests: Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing, Natural Resources Management.

WORK EXPERIENCE
Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) – Las Cruces Biological Station – Costa Rica
GIS Lab Manager
Maintain a geographic database with all the biological station needs. Assist researchers with their GIS and RS needs. Also worked with OTS as a GIS analyst on other minor projects.
2005 – June 2007

Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) – Costa Rica
GIS - Informatics Consultant
Georeference collections of Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) for Costa Rica and Mesoamerica. This work was done in collaboration with the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO – Mexico). The work involved developing database procedures and GIS methods to make the georeferencing process easier and faster.
2004 – 2005

Centro de Derecho Ambiental y de los Recursos Naturales (CEDARENA) – Costa Rica
Forestry Consultant
Fieldwork and GIS for land ownership assessments of the Maquenque National Park (north of Costa Rica) and Los Santos Protected Area. Also developed baselines for Land Trust Agreements of private forests.
2003-2005

Nordic Reforestation – Panama
Forestry Consultant
Map teak plantations in Colon, Panama.
January 2003

University of Wisconsin- Madison – Cocoa Project – Costa Rica
Forestry Consultant
Tree inventories and mapping of abandoned cocoa plantations in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
2002

Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) – La Selva Biological Station – Costa Rica
Graduation Project. Built a cloud free Base Image for the San Juan – La Selva Biological Corridor (north of Costa Rica) using Landsat images from 2000 to 2003.

SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS & WORKSHOPS
Ecological Informatics Training for Field Stations
Workshop done at the La Selva Biological Station and sponsored by Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS) and Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER)
October 2006

Mesoamerican workshop for wetland restoration and management
Workshop made at the Palo Verde Biological Station. It was sponsored by OTS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Global Water for Sustainability Program.
February 2006

Ecological Niche Modeling Workshop done at INBio. It was about bioinformatics and the use of software for mapping species distributions. The workshop was sponsored by INBio, UNESCO, and the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica.
November 2005

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
Brosi, B.J., G.C. Daily, T.M. Shih, F. Oviedo, and G. Durán. In Press. The effects of forest fragmentation on bee communities in tropical countryside. Journal of Applied Ecology.

MANUSCRIPTS IN PREPARATION
Pejchar, L., R.M. Pringle, J. Ranganathan, J.R. Zook, G. Durán, F. Oviedo, G.C. Daily. Seed dispersal by birds in a human-dominated landscape. Submitted to Ecology Letters.

LANGUAGES
• Spanish – native language
• English – speak fluently and read/write

Date: 2008

Title: Birds as agents of seed dispersal in a human-dominated landscape in southern Costa Rica

URL/Link: doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2007.11.008

Description: This is a study that examined bird community structure and seed-dispersal patterns in agricultural countryside in Costa Rica.

Date: 2007

Title: The effects of forest fragmentation on bee communities in tropical countryside

URL/Link: doi:10.1111/j.1365-2664.2007.01412.x

Description: This article examined bee community responses to forest fragment size, shape, isolation and landscape context by sampling foraging bees in the countryside of the southern mountains of Costa Rica.