Evolution leads to an increasing number of species, and that's why it is so difficult for us to know how many of them inhabit the Earth. Should we spend efforts to conserve all of them or would it be enough with just a few?

To Jordi and Olga.

Jaume Terradas explains how an error in channeling the water of the Colorado River in California created a large artificial lake that, now, is endangered by the great water demand from the crop fields and nearby cities.

Afforestation is a type of land use change project primarily designated for wood production, soil and water conservation, increasing carbon storage and mitigating climate change. This study shows that afforestation changes, moreover, soil pH, that is a key soil variable.

To help promote ECOPOTENTIAL project CREAF and all ECOPOTENTIAL partners opened an exhibition entitled "Spaced: Using Earth Observations to Protect Natural Landscapes" at the European Parliament. Those with passes to the European Parliament can view it from 8-12 January 2018.

According to a study Josep Peñuelas has published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the size of herbivorous megafauna was crucial to their survival in a cold, dry, largely barren environment. The study's data were obtained by incorporating the hugely significant effect of herbivores into innovative mathematical models capable of simulating landscape evolution.

Birds for their feathers, but many other animals too, suffer the path to extinction because of human whims.

A new video of CREAF Talks conferences is now available. Scott Ollinger, from University of New Hampshire, USA, talks about basic relations among foliar N and CO2 assimilation in forests, relationships between N concentrations and a suite of functionally convergent plant traits that influence canopy reflectance, and implications for broad-scale N mapping and ecosystem—climate interactions.

The researcher from McGill University, in Quebec, and CREAF associated, visited us again to talk about animal innovation from different points of view, from the ecological implications to the physiological characteristics that allow it.

Jaume Terradas reminds Joan Puigdefàbregas, desertification expert.