We interview Catherine Preece, PhD in biological studies and specialist on sub-arctic vegetation. Dr. Preece carried out her first post-doc at the University of Sheffield on agriculture-related themes. The Marie Curie grant awardee is currently doing her second post-doctoral stay in Catalonia, where she is now focusing on drought effects in Mediterranean forests. Our conversation covered a number of topics, including: what is the role of climate change?

A new study on wildfires in California, published in the journal PLOS ONE, and with the participation of  Enric Batllori, researcher from CREAF and the Catalonia Forest Technology Centre (CTFC), reveals that human activities influence the frequency and location of wildfires just as much as climate. The researchers evaluated both the 'anthropogenic factor' and climate change.

The forest treeline shifts upward slower than temperature increase, and it can be hindered by densification of shrubs. A number of factors influence upward forest expansion, including the particular plant species growing near trees, climate change, human activity, and terrain morphology. The Tibetan Plateau, practically devoid of human pressures, offers a pristine area for study 

Since 1982, Earth has become greener in an area covering 36 million km², close to two times the size of the United States. Above all, this seems to be the result of a fertilizing effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) on plants. The study was carried out with satellite images which can capture this increase in terrestrial leaf area.

Researchers from ICTJA-CSIC, CREAF and the University of Barcelona have extracted a number of sedimentary samples from lake bottoms on the island. These samples have allowed the reconstruction of environmental changes over the past 3,000 years including history of its climate, ecology and culture. The pollen records that had been relied upon previously for such work were not continuous and their interpretation led to the erroneous idea that deforestation of the island was sudden and caused exclusively by human over-exploitation.

In 1966, the USA’s President is Lyndon Johnson, in the USSR it is Brezhnev, in France de Gaulle, in India Indira Gandhi. There is an increasing US involvement in Vietnam’s war (and an increasing refuse of war inside the US). 

When an animal has limited information about its environment, a chaotic movement pattern could be an efficient strategy for finding what it needs. For mollusks, this could result from internal neural processes. Understanding the mechanisms for chaos generation and its connection with search behavior could help apply these types of patterns to research on humans. 

On April 25^th Bernat Claramunt will attend the event, Mountains for Europe’s Future, in Brussels. The event promotes the inclusion of mountain-related topics in the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

ECOPOTENTIAL Project is going Online! ECOPOTENTIAL  is a large European-funded H2020 project that focuses its activities on a targeted set of internationally recognised Protected Areas, blending Earth Observations from remote sensing and field measurements, data analysis and modelling of current and future ecosystem conditions and services.