Meet the Scientists


Roger Ellis and Diane Bellis are the leaders on the project. They met when Bellis was in South Africa in 1994 shortly after the election of Nelson Mandela to the Presidency. She was in South Africa for USDA, identifying potential cooperative activities.	At the same time, she represented USDA on the science and technology delegation headed by the U.S. Department of State. While discussing possible cooperative research activities, Ellis mentioned the significance of the J.P.H. Acocks data set.	Bellis had been looking for an opportunity to integrate teachers into cutting edge research. It took four years to find funding for the project. International cooperative research seldom involves teachers nor do professional development activities for teachers involve field activities. This was a new model for environmental or science education projects.


Roger P. Ellis Ph.D	Roger is the South African principal investigator of the pilot project of the D.C. Initiative on vegetation change in South Africa. He is the deputy director of the Plant Genetic Resources Unit of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC-PGRU) in Pretoria, South Africa, where he is responsible for policy development and implementation in the fields of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and plant genetic resources.
	He is a trained botanist whose main research direction has been systematic anatomical research on the leaf anatomy of the South African grasses. Apart from taxonomic contributions the applied aspects of grass leaf anatomy have received attention, such as photosynthetic pathways and the presence of secondary compounds, such as tannins in the grass family. He is the author of 68 scientific papers and a member of several scientific societies.

Diane Bellis Ph.D.	Diane is the U.S. principal investigator of the pilot project of the D.C. Initiative on vegetation change in South Africa. She is an organic geochemist with a Ph.D.in chemistry from the New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology and a B.S. in biology from the University of California, Irvine.
	For the past several years, she has worked at the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and State to develop and manage cooperative research activities and training programs in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. As a geochemist, she has worked with the USDA Forest Service and NASA to establish prehistoric fire regimes in the Brazilian savanna. But her overarching research interest is in late Cretaceous paleoenvironments. Last year, Bellis taught science (and other subjects) at Cuyama Valley High School in northern Santa Barbara County, California.

Mariana Jooste	Mariana has an agricultural research diploma in pasture and rangeland science. She is the in situ conservation and biodiversity officer in the Plant Genetic Resources Unit of the Agricultural Research Council and is responsible for plant collecting activities and ecogeographical surveys. The development of a plant use database and associated illustrations are important contributions she is making to vegetation studies and plant biodiversity conservation.

Michael D. Panagos (M.Sc. Agric.)	Mike is a researcher in the Vegetation Ecology Division of the Range and Forage Institute of the Agricultural Research Council. He is involved with vegetation characterization and quantification involving phytosociology, vegetation mapping and monitoring species dynamics caused by land use practices such as grazing management and burning regimes. Mike has extensive experience in analyzing vegetation and recommending sustainable management practises. He has authored and co-authored 32 scientific and popular papers.