Dr. Bruno De Vos

(ORCID: 0000-0001-9523-3453) (PhD Bioscience Engineering Soil Science 2009, KUleuven; MSc Agricultural Sciences - Forestry 1989 UGent)  is senior scientist (expert) at the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) in Flanders, Belgium. Theme coordinator for terrestrial biogeochemistry and working in the Environment and Climate unit (MILKLIM).  

Bruno De Vos graduated as a MSc in Agricultural Engineering in 1989 at Ghent University, specialised in forestry and environmental sanitation. He started his career in 1991 as a research scientist at the Laboratory of Forestry of Gent University conducting applied research on afforestation of heavy metal contaminated dredged disposal sites. Since then he has conducted several biogeochemical studies on the relationships between contaminated soil/sites and forest ecosystems. In 1995 he left university to become responsible for the Site Research unit at the Institute for Forestry and Game management (IBW) in Geraardsbergen, and became permanent staff and civil servant of the Flemish Community in 1997. At that institute he initiated a soil and analytical laboratory, conducted and coordinated several regional forest soil surveys across Flanders and developed soil geodatabases with a variable team of 5 to 22 collaborators. One of these surveys was on soil fauna (1996 - 1998), but most of his work was related to biogeochemical cycling in forests and ecotoxicological studies on contaminated sites. Since 2003 he started to focus on C-studies in forest soils, building on the comprehensive soil databases he developed in the past. In 2009 he obtained his PhD in Soil Science from the University of Leuven (KULeuven) for his work entitled “Uncertainties of forest soil carbon stock assessment in Flanders”. At the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), he currently works as soil expert in the Environment and Climate Unit. Apart from ‘regional’ duties, he is quite active at the European level, since 2007 as Chairman of the UN/ECE ICP Forests Expert Panel of Soil and Soil solution. In this network he has close contacts with forest soil scientists from every EU country and cooperates with them in soil-related integrative studies, models and publications. He was and is active in developing harmonized methods for sampling and analysis of soils and building standardized comprehensive forest soil condition databases at the EU level. Within ICP Forests he is part of the Programme Coordinating Group and a member of the Scientific committee. Currently his research focus is oriented again towards soil biodiversity and links with SOC stocks and carbon stabilisation.