Dr Masato Shinoda is a professor at Nagoya University, Japan. He is a skilled and highly experienced researcher in ecological climatology and dryland disaster science. Dr Shinoda has successfully implemented many research projects in Mongolia on herders’ society, ecological modelling and dzud disaster. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed papers, 140 non-peer-reviewed papers and 70 books or book chapters. In addition, he has served as an author and expert reviewer of the Second to Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.