Prof. Franco Biondi is an environmental scientist with a specialty in dendroecology. His main interests are climate and forest dynamics, ecohydrological changes, wildfire and drought history, particularly in mountain watersheds. He holds an Italian doctorate in forestry from the Università di Firenze, and MS and PhD degrees in watershed management and geosciences from the University of Arizona in Tucson. He is currently Professor and DendroLab Director in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Science at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is also a member of the interdisciplinary graduate program in Environmental Sciences and Health. Together with his students and colleagues, he has conducted research in tree-dominated landscapes of the North American West, Mexico, and southern Europe on how climate (especially drought) impacts wood formation and tree-ring chronologies.