Arun Dayanandan is a Ph.D. Candidate at Yale University’s School of the Environment (School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) and Lewis B. Cullman Fellow at the New York Botanical Garden studying under the mentorship of Prof. Mark S. Ashton. His research focuses on the ecology and management of forests with a particular emphasis on positioning plantation forests as active agents in global environmental restoration strategies. Through field inventories and trait-based analyses conducted in commercial-scale plantations across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, Arun investigates how differences in plantation governance and management affect regeneration dynamics, functional diversity, and the recruitment of native species. By integrating this data with biodiversity and stand dynamics theory, he evaluates how plantations can act as successional catalysts helping to move degraded landscapes upward along the restoration staircase. This work reconceptualizes plantations not merely as production-focused systems, but as managed landscapes capable of conserving biodiversity, sequestering carbon, and providing ecosystem services. In highlighting cross-regional variation in both management practices and ecological outcomes, Arun’s research offers new empirical foundations and applied frameworks for aligning plantation management with global climate and biodiversity commitments.