Himlal Baral is a scientist within the Forests and Environment programme of CIFOR. His background is in sustainable forest management and current research interests include spatial assessment and mapping of ecosystem goods and services in forested and production landscapes for landscape-level planning and decision making. Himlal obtained his PhD from Melbourne School of Land and Environment at the University of Melbourne, where he investigated various approaches for quantifying and assessing trade-offs between provisioning and regulating services in multifunctional landscapes in south-eastern Australia. Himlal holds a B.Sc. (Forestry) and two Masters Degrees one in Forest Science from the University of Melbourne and another in Social Science from Tribuuban University, Nepal. Prior to joining CIFOR, Himlal worked as a Forester, Spatial Analyst, Resource Planner and Forestry Consultant in both public and private sectors in Asia and the Pacific.