Leendert Adriaan (Sampurno) Bruijnzeel is a Professor of Land Use and Hydrology based at VU University, Amsterdam. He has 35 years of experience with forest hydrological research in the humid tropics, mostly in South-East Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. His main research interests include the water and nutrient dynamics of tropical forests, above all montane cloud forests; his other main research topics include the hydrological impacts of land-cover change (deforestation/reforestation) and erosion and sediment transport processes. Professor Bruijnzeel is the author of two other books and the co-editor of Forests, Water, and People in the Humid Tropics also published by Cambridge University Press (2005) and UNESCO as part of the International Hydrology Series. In 2005 he received the prestigious Busk Medal from the Royal Geographical Society.

Frederick N. Scatena is Professor and Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1988 he has served as the Principal Co-PI of the National Science Foundation's Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research Project and since 2009 as the Lead PI of the NSF Luquillo Critical Zone Observatory, both in Puerto Rico. Professor Scatena has worked in tropical forest hydrology for the past 32 years, on topics ranging from water supply to the influence of hurricanes on the biogeochemistry and water quality of Caribbean streams. He has been awarded the International Institute of Tropical Forestry Puerto Rican Ecology Award (2008), and various USDA Research Scientist Awards.

Lawrence Hamilton is a Professor Emeritus (Cornell University) and former Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawai'i. He has authored over 300 publications throughout his career and is known popularly as the 'father of cloud forests' due to his successful campaign over many years to get these unique forests on the international conservation agenda. His awards include Forest Conservationist of the Year from the New York State Conservation Council (1969); the Environmental Achiever Award from Friends of UNEP (1987); the Packard International Parks Merit Award from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (2003); and the prestigious King Albert Gold Medal for Mountain Conservation Leadership (2004). In 2008 he was named an Honorary Member of IUCN, and in the same year was profiled as one of the 20 global 'Earth Movers' by IUCN.