Joseph Buongiorno, a professor of forest ecology and management with an appointment in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala.

Buongiorno was honored “for his theoretically advanced and practically useful modeling of the forest sector and international trade of forest products.”

In his lecture at the university as an honorary-degree holder, Buongiorno discussed predictions that the world’s forest area will decrease by almost half a billion hectares by 2030, with most of the loss in Asia and Africa. However, the global volume of forest stock would actually increase in that time, due mostly to growth in Europe and North America.

According to Buongiorno, the discrepancy is because wealthy nations can choose to protect forests, while the poorest nations will face pressure to use them for other purposes, especially agriculture and grazing.