The COP21 set the maximum temperature increase for 2100 at 1.5° C. The only scenario which would allow achievement of this goal would require vastly reducing human CO2 emissions, significantly increasing the prominence of renewable energies, and the use of some type of artificial carbon sequestration technology.
Josep Peñuelas leads a study which suggests that rice yield will be more senstive to climate warming. Adaptatation polices to climate change are urgently needed to reduce its effect on rice yield.
We need to understand how things work, to know how to assemble and how to disassemble them. But we have reached a point of so much specialization and mechanization that too much often we can not understand how everything works, and even more, if we will be able to fix what we have broken.
The journal Nature has today published a study which had the participation of CSIC scientists at CREAF, Marc Estiarte and Josep Peñuelas, which demonstrates the relationship between the release of carbon from soils and the acceleration of climate change.
Ending perceptions of women and other disadvantaged groups simply as victims and instead empowering them as decision-makers in natural resource management are basic steps to deal with ecological crises more effectively. A new collection of studies addresses global environmental change from a feminist and interdisciplinary perspective.
CSIC and CREAF researcher Josep Peñuelas has received an honorary doctorate degree from the Estonian University of Life Sciences for his studies on global change. The university council considers his studies as excellent, and also values his international collaboration with Estonian researchers. The presentation of the award took place on September 23rd in the city of Tartu.
In the prizes to the trajectory of a scientist, people say , the hardest is to begin, because after the first award, the winner can be pretty sure that others will come. Maybe, but there are different categories of prizes. Josep Peñuelas is starting to get the big ones, those that he deserves by his contributions to ecology, his dedication and his ability to empathize in order to establish fruitful relationships with scientists all around the world.
This finding is described in an article including CREAF researchers and coauthors Aitor Ameztegui and Lluís Brotons. The study addresses how the superior limit of forest cover in the Pyrenees has changed over 50 years. According to the study, the tree line has advanced upward an average of 40 meters, one of the main causes of this being decreasing pressures from livestock. Contrary to common thinking to date, climate change may play a much lesser role than previously thought.
Climate experts, botanists, geographers and ecologists from CREAF and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) will train citizens to monitor seasonal changes which can be observed in nature. This way citizens will be able to help the scientists study the effects of climate change on animals and plants. Flower emergence, the dropping of leaves, or the arrival of certain birds will be some of the changes to be studied. Once trained, citizens will be able to contribute to European and Spanish phenology observation networks.
This phrase is often repeated among biologists, but it is time for non-biologists to recognize the truth of this statement. In the opening session of this year's course at the Institute of Catalan Studies, Jordi Casanova explained that in the light of modern knowledge, we humans are animals, considering not only in our biology (an obvious fact) but also our behavior. Many studies, mostly on apes, have shown the existence of feelings such as jealousy, envy, a sense of for injustice, rebellion; to these I would add empathy, defense of hierarchy, and a wish power.
