Professor John Herbohn
Fellow
- Bio/Profile
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John Herbohn is Director of USC's Forest Research Institute (FRI). He has been involved with Tropical Forestry research for close to three decades and is a world leader in the field. John's research is focused on forest resource management, with a particular emphasis on small holder forestry in developing countries where his work has made a huge impact through the development of livelihoods for in-country partners. Since joining USC several years ago, John has done an outstanding job in mobilising a significant concentration of Forestry researchers from across the globe, noting the recruitment and retention of several world leading researchers from the USA (Robin Chazdon who is a Thomson Highly Cited Researcher and USC’s first recipient of this honor), UK (Andrew Marshall from University of York and the FRI’s first ARC Future Fellow) and others from within Australia (e.g., Tony Page from JCU, Dibgy Race from ANU, Mark Annandale from UQ, etc.). John’s leadership is outstanding, noting that Forestry at USC earned the highest 2018 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) rating of 5 (a feat not possible without his significant scientific and leadership input), and the USC FRI is responsible singularly for approximately one third of USC’s research effort. The USC FRI is the leading Forestry research institute in Australasia and is arguably the premier research flagship of USC, which is a testimony of the excellence of John’s scientific leadership. Furthermore, John has a longstanding relationship with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) where he has held $1-2m pa in research funding for Forestry research for development in the developing world for many decades. It should be noted that USC was able to secure number #1 research provider status for ACIAR, and John’s individual and leadership contributions were a key part to this outstanding national success. Most notably, his ACIAR funded research into reforestation in the Philippines earned national media attention (a cover story in The Washington Post), and attracted the attention of Shell Global Solutions as a sustainable and meaningful way of creating significant carbon offsets. In fact, again as a first for USC, John has formalised a project for $30m over 7 years with Shell Global Solutions to roll-out a reforestation program in the Philippines. Last, John has an excellent publication record in an applied field of research like Forestry embodying 112 papers at a H-index of 23, 1,894 citations, and a 2018-2020 field weighted citation impact (FWCI) of 1.73 - sourced from Scopus and SciVal on 20/10/2021.
