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Research in recent years has increasingly shifted away from purely academic research, and into applied aspects of the discipline, including climate change research, conservation, and sustainable development. It has by now widely been recognized that "traditional" knowledge is always in flux and adapting to a quickly changing environment. Trends of globalization, especially the globalization of plant markets, have greatly influenced how plant resources are managed nowadays. While ethnobotanical studies are now available from many regions of the world, no comprehensive encyclopedic series focusing on the worlds mountain regions is available in the market. Scholars in plant sciences worldwide will be interested in this dynamic content.
The field (and thus the market) of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology has grown considerably in recent years. Student interest is on the rise, attendance at professional conferences has grown steadily, and the number of professionals calling themselves ethnobotanists has increased significantly. Various societies of such professionals include the Society for Economic Botany, the International Society of Ethnopharmacology, the Society of Ethnobiology, the International Society for Ethnobiology, and many regional and national societies in the field that currently have thousands of members. Growth has been most robust in BRIC countries.
Prof. Dr Rainer Bussmann earned his M.Sc. (Diploma) in Biology at Universitat Tübingen, in 1993 and his doctorate at Universitat Bayreuth in 1994. He is an ethnobotanist and vegetation ecologist, and currently Head of the Department of Botany at the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe, Germany, and Full Professor of Ethnobotany at Ilia State University. Before Dr Bussmann was director of William L. Brown Center at Missouri Botanical Garden and held appointments as a Research Fellow in Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin, as Associate Professor of Botany and as Scientific Director of Harold Lyon Arboretum at the University of Hawaii, and at University of Bayreuth from 1994 to 2003. His work focuses on ethnobotanical research, and the preservation of traditional knowledge, in mountain regions. He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed papers, over 1300 peer-reviewed book chapters, and authored or edited 38 books.
Prof. Dr Mostafa Elachouri is a Professor at Mohammed First University, Oujda, Morroco, Department of Biology, laboratory of Physiology, Genetics and Ethnopharmacology. He obtained his BSc from the University Mohammed V. Rabat (Morocco) in 1980. He continued his studies in Strasbourg-France, for his MSc degree. In 1985 Professor Elachouri Mostafa obtained his DSc at Luis Pasteur University of Strasbourg-France under the supervision of Professor J.A. Hoffman (Nobel Prize in Medicine 2011). In 1997 he obtained PhD in Zoology from Mons-Hainaut University in Mons-Belgium. His main area of interest focuses on Pharmacology and Toxicology, Biomedical Sciences, and Environmental Sciences. His area of expertise include Ethnopharmacology, Ethnobotany, Ethnomedicine, Toxicology, Environmental sciences, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Taxonomy, Vernacular names, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Healthcare, Traditional Medicine, Toxic Plants, and Pesticides. He has published a wide range of peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters and edited several books.
Prof. Dr Zaal Kikvidze graduated in 1978 from Tbilisi State University (Georgia). He worked as a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences of Georgia and in the Institute of Teachers' Training of Georgia and later graduated in the Certificate Course in Environmental Education at Jordanhill College, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. In 1993 he defended his Doctor of Science (Habil.) thesis. Dr. Kikvidze worked as an Associate Researcher at Chiba University (Japan), as Ramon-y-Cajal Fellow at the Consejo Superior de las Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain), and Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo (Japan). The major lines of his research are plant community ecology, species diversity and geographical distributions on ecological gradients, rules of species coexistence and interactions among organisms, environmental education, ethnoecology, and socio-ecology. In 2012 he became Professor of Ecology and 2014 Director of the Institute of Ethnobiology and Socioecology at Ilia State University.
