Graduate Students: Guillermo Duran

Background

I’m a graduate student from Costa Rica at San Francisco State University, Department of Geography and Human Environmental Studies. I studied forest engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (ITCR) and worked in the field since I finished college in 2003 until I moved to San Francisco for graduate studies in July 2007. I’m also a recipient of the Lakeside Foundation Fellowship for the master’s program; and professors Barbara Holzman and Healy Hamilton are part of my thesis committee.

I worked in Costa Rica on several projects and with a number of organizations: Chocolate Biodiversity and Productivity Project (Milwaukee Public Museum - University of Wisconsin - USDA), Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio), Centro de Derecho Ambiental y de los Recursos Naturales (CEDARENA), and with the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) at the Las Cruces Biological Station.

Research Overview

I’m interested in the effects of forest fragmentation on the population of economically important timber species in Costa Rica, and the possible impact of future climate change on their geographic distributions. My main two questions are: how much their range has been reduced by land use change, and what will happen with their current range based on the predictions of future climate. I’m also interested in the dynamics of the forest patches that gradually became isolated by the deforestation process in the countryside of Costa Rica ; and in developing new methods for mapping the land cover in the tropical landscape.

Contact Information:

Guillermo Duran
San Francisco State University,
Department of Geography and Human Environmental Studies
California Academy of Sciences

gduran@calacademy.org

Guillermo Duran Resume, 2008 (57 kb)