The observatory is the first of its kind in Spain and CREAF is coordinating the team of scientists behind it. They will be working with volunteers to monitor the evolution of butterfly populations in 54 parks and gardens in Barcelona and Madrid.

Science histpry often doesn't visibilize all people equally. Some of them people who have inspired big changes, in this case in ecology and evolution. Many of them are women, and that is why we want to take advantage of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science to make them known.

Human-induced increase in nitrogen deposition profoundly alters nitrogen (N) cycling globally. Yet, the ultimate fate of nitrogen deposition on forest ecosystems isn’t fully understood. Rossella Guerrieri, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow in CREAF sheds light on the overlooked leaf microbial transformations of nitrogen deposition and its contribution to N cycling.

SIBECOL is a scientific entity created in 2018 promoted by the Spanish Association for Terrestrial Ecology (AEET), the Iberian Association of Limnology (AIL), the Portuguese Ecological Society (SPECO) and the Spanish Society of Ethology and Evolutionary Ecology (SEEEE). The conference coincides with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Professor Ramon Margalef.

CREAF and ICO (Catalan Ornithological Institute) researchers Sergi Herrando and Lluís Brotons have participated in a study that shows populations of birds described as “mountain specialists” to have fallen by 10% in a decade in Europe. The situation is even more alarming in the Pyrenees and elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula, where mountain bird populations fell by 21%.

Maps are a key tool for ecologists and naturalists. What is its origin? What applications can have? The phenomena that studies ecology have an important geographical base, depend on the space environment in which they occur. For this reason, cartographic techniques in combination with computing and large databases can help us to study, for example, the relationship between climate, human legacy and the current distribution of species.

According to an article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the authors of which include CREAF postdoctoral researchers Sara Marañón and Rossella Guerrieri (Marie Sklodowska Curie grant holders), the concentration of nitrogen in plant leaves has been in general decline throughout the world for the last 40 years.

On 29-30 November 2018, the National Research Institute for Rural Engineering, Water and Forestry (INRGREF) and the Ecological and Forestry Applications Research Centre (CREAF) co-organised the FASTER Kick-off meeting gathering for the first time representatives of its consortium partners. This event allowed the participants to familiarise with the planned work for the next three years of the project’s duration, and to agree on the imminent actions for the coming months.