At this time of year, deciduous trees across Europe are losing the last of their leaves. When will they come into leaf again? A study just published in Nature Communications has shown that while year-to-year leafing date variations can be explained by heat accumulation, local climate is a key factor in geographical variations.

Published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), a study to which the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and CREAF have contributed has revealed that the time for which forests retain carbon has fallen by between 0.2% and 0.3% every year in recent decades. Plant mortality is rising due to higher carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels and, in particular, warming and droughts.

The journals Environmental Research Letters and Scientific Reports have recently published two articles in which researchers from the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) and CREAF call for new policies to be oriented to improving the conservation of endangered species.

CREAF is a firm believer in scientific cooperation and, accordingly, the international dimension of its activity is constantly growing. This year has taken Olga Roig and Josep Maria Espelta to the UK and Lebanon to attend meetings on the forestry sector and environmental policies.

The Big Mosquito Bytes project has been awarded a million euros by the “la Caixa” Banking Foundation. The project will combine citizen science and other massive data sources to develop innovative models that allow predicting the risk of epidemics, as well as visualizing this risk in real time. In the project led by CEAB-CSIC, scientists from UPF, the Max Planck Institute for Demography, the National Center for Epidemiology of ISPCIII and CREAF participate, and it draws heavily on the Mosquito Alert citizen science platform.

The future does not look bright for the Montseny brook newt, according to an article published recently in the journal Ecology and Evolution. Led by CREAF and the Spanish National Research Council’s Centre for Advanced Studies in Blanes (CEAB-CSIC), the study on which the article reports concludes that climate change and alterations to vegetation cover in Montseny Natural Park are a threat to the newt’s long-term survival.

Since 2015, the Medecc network, with more than 80 scientists from all over the Euro-Mediterranean region, has been producing this pioneering and innovative report which is the largest scientific assessment of climate and environmental change at regional level in the Mediterranean.

The CREAF ecologist has participated in a series of interviews by the English journal Functional Ecology to researchers from all over the world to learn about their experiences during the PhD and to understand how it works in each country.

Monitoring progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires a huge amount of data. Citizen science could help fill important data gaps according to a new study published in  Nature Sustainability. The research, led by IIASA, has involved a large community of citizen science experts from around the world, including Joan Masó, a researcher at CREAF. 

A study led by CREAF has found that new forests growing on abandoned rural land are able to capture more carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere than long-established forests. This effect could be temporary, however, as the wood of their trees is less dense, making them more vulnerable to extreme climate events.