CREAF

Cancelled due to Covid-19

TITLE: "Linking ecosystem services provision and human health in urban landscapes" 

DATE: Tuesday 15th November 2022.

TIME & FORMAT: form 12 to 1pm CET - In-person and online. 

Seminars will combine in-person and online formats (CREAF, Sala Graus II, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) but in all cases, talks will be always streamed (not recorded), so they can be followed online. 

HOW TO CONNECT: direct link to Jean Paul Metzger's conference.

SUMMARY OF THE WORKSHOP: 

The current trends of high urbanization rates associated with climate change bring new and complex challenges for healthy city life. The quality of life and human well-being in urban areas depends largely on the provision of ecosystem services by natural areas that can mitigate problems such as rising air temperatures, pollution, and flood or landslide risks, among others. To understand where these services occur or where they are lacking, we need spatially explicit models that consider the effects of landscape composition and configuration on the different components of the service provisioning chain (supply, demand, and flow). Here we will present a conceptual model that considers the effects of landscape-level processes on supply, demand, and flow of ecosystem services, and then we will show the application of this approach to the study of some ecosystem services in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The supply of these services will also be related to the occurrence of mental, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases. The combination of these data should allow a better planning of natural spaces in urban areas focusing on the well-being of their inhabitants.   

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Jean Paul Metzger is a full Professor of Ecology at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). He obtained his MSc and PhD in Landscape Ecology at the University of Toulouse (France). Since 1995, he has been working with landscape planning and biodiversity conservation in highly fragmented landscapes, essentially in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest region. His main research focuses are related to landscape connectivity, ecological thresholds and time-lag responses to landscape changes, and conservation planning. More recently, he is exploring the relationships between landscape structure, ecosystems services, and human well-being, besides investigating the efficiency of environmental policies to manage multifunctional landscapes. He also uses extensive modeling and scenario approaches to link landscape-level processes with restoration processes.  

He has published over 190 papers in various journals that include Science, Nature, Landscape Ecology, Ecological Applications, Journal of Applied Ecology, Ecography, Oikos, Biological Conservation, among others. Those manuscripts have accumulated ca. 12,400 citations, resulting in an H-index of 51 (June 2022, Scopus database). He has supervised 30 M.Sc. dissertations, 19 doctoral theses and 19 post-doctoral projects. He was the founder of the Brazilian Chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE-BR) and vice-president of IALE.  

He was associate editor of “Biological Conservation” (2005-2010), and currently is member of the editorial board of “Landscape Ecology” and “Current Landscape Ecology Report”, and Editor-in-Chief of “Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation”. He was Lead Author in three assessments of The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): “Models and Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services”, “Land Degradation and Restoration” and “Americas”. He was also co-chair of the Brazilian Assessment (https://www.bpbes.net.br).