Fabrice DeClerck

Title: Programme Leader, Agrobiodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Duty post: Turrialba, Costa Rica

Fabrice Declerck joined Bioversity in January 2012 to lead the Programme in Agrobiodiversity and Ecosystem Services. He is a Belgian national with many years in the US (California).

Fabrice is a landscape and community ecologist whose primary research interests centre on the ecological mechanisms that drive the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes and how these mechanisms can be used to increase the livelihoods of the farming communities of developing countries.

His theoretical work highlights how functional diversity changes under landuse intensification, and how the concept of functional diversity can be used to reconstruct multifunctional agroecosytems and agricultural landscapes. He is interested in exploring the application of ecological tools and concepts in diverse fields including human nutrition, resilience, and poverty alleviation. Much of his recent work is centred on multifunctional landscapes, particularly the biological corridors of Central America, where he tries to understand how mapping tools and landscape ecology can identify ecosystem service hotspots to facilitate co-management of landscapes. Fabrice was named the Young Professional of the Year by the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development in 2005, and was Humboldt State University’s Man of the Year in 1995.

Credentials:

BSc, Plant and Forest Ecology, Humboldt State University, USA ,
MSc, Forest Biology Iowa State University, Ames, USA.
PhD, Geography/Ecology, University of California, Davis, USA.
Postdoctoral Research, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, USA.
Adjunct Research Scholar, Tropical Agriculture Program, Columbia University, New York, USA.
Adjunct Professor, Natural Resources Dept. University of Idaho
Adjunct Professor, Division of Science, CATI

Languages:

Fluent in English, French and Spanish

Recent publications:

Igram, J.C, F.A. DeClerck, and C. Rumbaitis del Rio. 2012. Ecology and Poverty Alleviation. Springer Publishers
Read more  [1]

Avelino, J., A. Romero-Guridan, H. Cruz-Cuellar, and F.A.J. DeClerck. (2012). Landscape context and scale differentially impact coffee leaf rust, coffee berry borer and coffee root-knot nematodes. Ecological Applications
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Remans, R., D.F.B. Flynn, F. DeClerck, W. Diru, J. Fanzo, K. Gaynor, I. Lambrecht, J. Mudiope, P. Mutuo, P. Nkhoma, D. Siriri, C. Sullivan and C. Palm. 2011. Assessing nutritional diversity of cropping systems in African villages. PLoS One 6(6):1-11
Read more  [3]

DeClerck, F.A.J., Fanzo, J., Palm, C., Remans, R., 2011. Ecological approaches to human nutrition. Food and Nutrition Bulletin 32, S41-S50
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Milder, J.C., F. DeClerck, A. Sanfiorenzo, D. Sanchez, D. Tobar, and B. Zuckerberg. 2010. Effects of tree cover, land use, and landscape context on biodiversity conservation in an agricultural landscape in western Honduras. Ecosphere 1(1):1-22
Read more  [5]

DeClerck, F.A.J., R Chazdon, K.D. Holl, J.C. Milder, B. Finegan, A. Martinez-Salinas, P. Imbach, L. Canet, and Z. Ramos. 2010. Biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes of Mesoamerica: past, present and future. Biological Conservation 143(2010): 2301-2313

Laliberté, E., J. Wells, F. DeClerck, D. Metcalfe, C. Catterall, C Queiroz, I. Aubin, S. Bonser, Y. Ding, J. Fraterrigo, S. McNamara, J Morgan, D. Sánchez Merlos, F. Vesk, and M. Mayfield. 2010. Land use intensification reduces functional redundancy and response diversity in plant communities. Ecology Letters, 13: 76–86