BiographyJohn Dearing is professor of physical geography at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. His research interests focus on the use of long-term, multi-decadal, proxy records of environmental change and ecosystem services in addressing sustainable development problems. In 2010, he was awarded a grant for a two-year program framework project, Poverty and Ecology: Developing a New Evolutionary Approach, based in the lower Yangtze basin.