Ecology

Due to climate change, every year we record higher temperatures and precipitation is becoming scarce. This change in climate paradigm, added to a cluster of disturbances such as forest fires and pests, tests the resilience of forests around the world and especially those in Mediterranean climate zones that have suffered an increase in the conditions of aridity The ability of species to adapt to these conditions will define the forests of the future. But are Mediterranean forests resilient enough?

CREAF-based CSIC researcher Josep Peñuelas has contributed to an article published in Nature which proposes three key indicators for gauging how well a terrestrial ecosystem is functioning and assessing its state of health or wellbeing.

The recent study 'A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate change' published in Nature Communications shows that the measures taken are fragmented, local and not transformative. CREAF calls for more integrated and coordinated measures capable of reducing the risk that climate change poses to people.

A recent study led by CIBIO, the University of the Azores, CSIC and CREAF shows that the navigations of the Vikings could have taken them to the Azores about 700 years before the arrival of the Portuguese. The results, published in the journal PNAS, have been obtained through sediment samples from different lakes and environmental reconstructions.

We are in year one after the first pandemic. The planet is occupied entirely by humans who still believe in GDP ... Well, not entirely... A research center populated by a little bit of everything, the truth, is looking for ways to keep the planet habitable for our species.

Begoña García has spent many years passionately studying a curious plant, Borderea chouardii. It is a rare species with a biogeographical origin that dates back to the Tertiary and remains confined to a few limestone cliffs in the Central Pyrenees. Unknown until the middle of the 20th century, it is considered an endangered species. But... is it?

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.

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.

The conference will be held at University of Barcelona (UB). The conference is aimed to be the kickoff of SIBECOL (Sociedad Ibérica de Ecología) a new scientific society, joining ecologists from Iberian countries, whatever the system or approach they work on.

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.