Rate My Professor Zayra Ramos Bendana

Zayra Ramos Bendana, PhD, serves as a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning at Wageningen University & Research, contributing to the Architecture and Design faculty. She acts as the thesis coordinator for the MSc Land Use Planning (LUP) program and oversees bachelor's theses in landscape architecture and spatial planning. Examples of student projects she has supervised include studies on mobility as a service for elderly in small rural cores, promoting bus use among the elderly to keep facilities in reach, and collectivistic motivations for community involvement in spatial planning processes. Her professional address is Droevendaalsesteeg 3, 6708 PB Wageningen.

Her academic career includes affiliations with the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica, and the University of Idaho, where she participated in a joint doctoral program. Ramos Bendana's research focuses on the application of remote sensing to assess functional traits for ecosystem services, particularly in tropical forests, and the evaluation of economic instruments in conservation policy mixes. Key publications include her co-authorship in "Scaling up functional traits for ecosystem services with remote sensing: the case of leaf trait and ecosystem services trade-offs in tropical forests" (Ecology and Evolution, 2016), which addresses scaling challenges in tropical ecosystems using remote sensing techniques. She also contributed to the 2012 POLICYMIX report "Costa Rica: National level assessment of the role of economic instruments in the conservation policymix," analyzing payment for environmental services and other mechanisms. Additional works feature "Using k-nn and discriminant analyses to classify rain forest types in Costa Rica" (Remote Sensing of Environment, 2008) and "The multispectral separability of Costa Rican rainforest types with support vector machines" (2010). These publications highlight her expertise in classifying and mapping rainforest types using advanced analytical methods. Ramos Bendana is listed as a contact for the Landscape Architecture & Spatial Planning Group in the 2025 report "Rooting Impact in Evidence."