Rafael Bermudez Zavala, researcher

Rafael (1975) holds a Master in Coastal Oceanography with specialization in coastal zone management and land use change from the University of Baja California in Mexico. After graduating Rafael participate in several projects in regional land use planning and marine planning at local and national scale in Mexico. Afterwards, he acted as environmental consultant for national and international development projects related to gas-oil industry and tourism in the State of Baja California, Mexico. Rafael joined CSTM trough the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) postgraduate program in March 2007. Currently, his work seeks to create a policy framework for decision makers to ensure environmental service delivery from forest protection and tackle water shortage problems in Mexico, by means of economic instruments implementation such as Payment for Environmental Services at local scale. As well, as part of the ITC mission Rafael will emphasize on the spatial representation of environmental services by a spatial assessment at the local and regional scale. The Ph.D. research is supervised by Prof. Dr. Hans Bressers and Dr. Michael McCall (ITC).

Expertise

Remote Sensing

Geographical Information Systems

Land use planning

Environmental Impact Assessment

Research Interests

Environmental Policy

Markets for Environmental Services

Watershed management