Ilaria Germishuizen is Programme Manager of Spatial Technologies at the Institute for Commercial forestry Research (ICFR) in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. With a doctoral degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy and a MSc in Zoology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, she has been engaged in research and projects with a strong spatial modelling component in natural systems and plantation forests both locally and internationally since 1996.