A severe episode of drought in Doñana National Park (Spain), coinciding with a harsh winter, marked the beginning of a research study led by ecologist Maria Paniw, co-authored by CREAF researcher Francisco Lloret and fellow researcher Enrique de la Riva.
Climate change is making forests all over the world more vulnerable to drought, causing tree mortality episodes with serious ecological and social consequences. As yet, the traits of the vegetation replacing trees that have died as a result of drought are not known.
Recently, my friend Paul Zedler raised a question between insidious and philosophical: our scientific procedure based on searching for processes and establishing causal relationships, has no significance unless it translates into actions. I had no other option than accept the premise, otherwise I would get exposed at the top of the infamous ivory tower.
For Ramon Margalef, in the centenary of his birth.
Why do not we find ecosystems in the atmosphere, as in oceans and continents? In the atmosphere, spores, pollen grains and micro-organisms float, most of them expelled from soils. But trophic networks are not established, nor are there large flows of energy and matter controlled by living beings.
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.
The new association, SIBECOL, was constituted in an institutional event held on Monday, July 2, at the headquarters of the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona.
Scientists consider it key to understand why droughts kill so many trees and the influence of local forest histories on tree mortality. They also warn that we know very little about the joined effects of different disturbances on each ecosystem, and highlight the necessity to plan research projects covering more time and space.
