Janelle Sylvester

Research Fellow at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) focused on topics related to low-emission food systems, drivers of tropical deforestation, forest landscape restoration, sustainable land use systems—particularly cacao agroforestry and silvopasture systems—and their contributions to peacebuilding in Colombia.

She is also completing a PhD at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Her PhD research focuses on soil recovery and carbon sequestration in silvopasture systems and drivers of land degradation in agricultural landscapes in the Amazonian department of Caquetá, Colombia. Her master's thesis centered on tropical forest restoration in Costa Rica where she compared seed and seedling limitation among three methods of restoration—tree islands, plantations and natural regeneration.

She has conducted fieldwork in tropical moist forests (Ecuador, Colombia), premontane humid forests (Costa Rica), subtropical wet forests (Puerto Rico), mangroves (Malaysia), coral reefs (Malaysia), sea turtle nesting sites (Malaysia), and Texas woodlands (USA). Her research is driven by a desire to disseminate best practices and bridge the gap between multidisciplinary scientific research and on-the-ground project implementation so that successful, large-scale and long-lasting restoration, conservation and sustainable development goals can be achieved.