A. Neelakantan N. Schwartz M. Agarwala M. Cattau M. Jain M. Fagan M. Marlier V. Gutierrez-Velez K. Wurster S. Zeigler D. Morton J. Dempewolf L. Anderson Ruth S. DeFries (born October 20, 1956) is an environmental geographer who specializes in the use of remote sensing to study Earth's habitability under the influence of human activities, such as deforestation,[1][2][3] that influence regulating biophysical and biogeochemical processes.

[7] DeFries received her Ph.D. in 1980 from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and her B.A.

She had previously been the Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development in Columbia's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology.

Before moving to Columbia in 2008, she was a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park with joint appointments in the Department of Geography and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center.

[8][9] The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook, Erle Ellis, Christopher Foreman, David Keith, Martin Lewis, Mark Lynas, Ted Nordhaus, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff, Michael Shellenberger, Robert Stone, and Peter Teague[10] DeFries is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific papers on such topics as: impacts of tropical fires on air quality and greenhouse gas emissions; land use, nutrition, and food security; land use and conservation in the tropics; climate and tropical agriculture; processes of tropical deforestation and degradation; methods for remote sensing of land cover; and reviews and conceptual papers.