NEWFORESTS project: kick-off meeting 3-4th February, in Montreal, (Quebec- Canada)

In early February members from forest research institutions in Quebec, (Canada), Catalonia (Spain) and southern France met in Montreal for the kick-off meeting of the project NEWFORESTS. The meeting included a live broadcast of the event to be held on the Tuesday the 4th to those interested in the project (more to follow at CEMFOR and CEF).

The NEWFORESTS is a new exchange programme bringing together researchers from 5 research institutions: two from public research centres in Spain, Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) and Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), one French institution, Bio-Archaeology and Ecology Centre (CBAE), and two Canadian Universities (University du Québec à Montréal, UQAM, and in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, UQAT) hosting two of the main hubs of the Centre for Forest Research (CEF).   

Building from previous collaborations (i.e. LIA MONTABOR, FOREST COMPLEXITY MODELLING), the aim of the NEWFORESTS project is to create a competitive platform at the international level to analyse the responses of forest ecosystems to global changes and integrate current knowledge in sound and innovative forest management and planning approaches. The general objective of the program is to determine how to effectively integrate woodland management (including non-management options) into strategies aimed to adjust and mitigate global change.

The project is organized in 5 thematic work packages ranging from the basic understanding of forests dynamics, biodiversity and functioning to research on interactions between global change drivers determining disturbances regimes and the integration of the gathered knowledge into advanced modelling tools and sound management guidelines at different spatial scales. A fundamental aspect of the program is that it stresses not only the responsibility of human society as a major driver of global change, but also recognizes that we have an opportunity to mitigate this change through informed, proper management decisions.

General objectives of the project kick-off-meeting were:

-    Discuss the general governance of the NEWFORESTS project aiming at ensuring exchanges between the consortium institutions in the topics covered by the program of work.

-    Identify, propose and develop a program of activities for the consortium in the forthcoming months and years.

-    Introduce the members of the consortium to each other in more detail to enhance reciprocal knowledge of main research carried out and to facilitate the establishment of research exchanges.

En català or click here for more info!

EUBON meeting in Solsona: European contribution to the Biodiversity Observation Network

A international team of researches from the EUBON project (Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network) gathered from 25-27th November in Solsona to held the kick-off meeting for two of the project work-packages.

Discussions, including the different members of EBCC-CTFC team in the project, revolved around the development of state-of-the-art methods and models aimed at using the rapidly growing amounts of available data on biodiversity patterns, trends and their dependency on natural and anthropogenic drivers. Other objectives discussed focussed on the analyses of biodiversity and their relationships to various drivers, focussing on populations and species ranges, using newly available data from monitoring, collections and remote-sensing, and the projection of biodiversity patterns to possible future trends and threats to biodiversity across scales based on EU scenario data.

En català or click here for more info!

Landsat 8 launching event: remote sensing applications to biodiversity research

Ecoland members were invited to the Landsat 8 launching event held in Barcelona by the GRUMETS research group. Magda Pla and Núria Aquilué attended the event and presented some of the applications based on remote sensing data that the group have been using in Biodiversity based research

En català or click here for more info!

IPBES-1: Intergovernmental platform for biodiversity and ecosystem services

Ecol-Land is attending the first plenary meeting (19th-26th January) of the IPBES (Intergovernmental platform for biodiversity and ecosystem services). Lluís Brotons is representing as delegate, environmental research from Catalan CERCA institutions CREAF and CTFC. Research conducted in this centres has the potential to contribute to the assessments that IPBES will promote to guide policy making in this in the future.

En català or click here for more info!

XV National Congress of Geographical Information Techniques (AGE, Madrid, September 2012)

Adrián Regos and Magda Pla (ECOLAND) in collaboration with colleagues from FiDBosc (CTFC), GRUMETS (CREAF and UAB) and Department of Zoology in the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) have contributed with three proceedings to XV Conference of Geographical Information Techniques in the context of global change organized by the Spanish Society of geographers  (AGE) and celebrated in Madrid from 19 to 21 of September.

The remote sensing and geographic information systems are particularly useful in addressing the challenge posed by global change. Many of the papers presented at the conference were related to the various dimensions of this problem and provide methodological and technological solutions at both local as global scales. They provide products and results, in cartographic format many of them, which should be of useful of first order to facilitate decision-making and planning experts in planning and policy-makers with responsibility for these matters.

Other presentations from ECOLAND:

Regos, A., Ninyerola, M., Moré, G. y Pons, X.2012. Evaluación de las dinámicas temporales de las cubiertas y usos del suelo mediante comparación post-clasificación e índices de área relativa. Proceedings del XV Congreso Nacional de Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica. Editores: Javier Martínez Vega y Pilar Martín Isabel. Madrid, AGE-CSIC, 19-21 de Septiembre de 2012; págs.: 195-204. ISBN: 84-695-4759-3

Pla, M., Ameztegui, A., Brotons, Ll.  y Coll, Ll. 2012. Procesos de colonización y densificación de zonas arbóreas y matorrales como indicador del cambio global en  el Parque Nacional de Aigüestortes y Estany de Sant Maurici. Proceedings del XV Congreso Nacional de Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica.  Editores: Javier Martínez Vega y Pilar Martín Isabel. Madrid, AGE-CSIC, 19-21 de Septiembre de 2012; págs.: 179-184. ISBN: 84-695-4759-3.

Regos, A.,  Tapia, L., Vidal, M. y Domínguez, J.2012. Teledetección y SIGs como fuentes de información ambiental en el modelado de distribución de especies: el  caso práctico del Conejo europeo. Proceedings del XV Congreso Nacional de Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica.  Editores: Javier Martínez Vega y Pilar Martín Isabel. Madrid, AGE-CSIC, 19-21 de Septiembre de 2012; págs.: 205-2012. ISBN: 84-695-4759-3

En català or click here for more info!

Visit to Australian research centres

                                     

New contacts and collaborations allow the ECO-LAND lab to establish a link with Australian scientists.

A research stay funded by the Catalan Government has allowed Lluís Brotons to visit Jane Elith at ACERA (Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analyses), located in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne. The stay is focussing on the applications of Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) and the uncertainty issues associated to projections of SDM to future landscape changes. A international workshop on some of these issues is also scheduled.

Lluís Brotons has given two seminars on SDM applications in a Mediterranean context and contacted researchers from a number of research institutions. Contacts have been established with the Center of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, Arthur Rylah Institute and Deakin University.

En català or click here for more info!

XXX International Union of Game Biologist (IUGB)

ECO-LAND has contributed to the organization of the XXX International Union of Game Biologist (IUGB) and XIII Perdix Congress http://www.iugb2011.com/, which was held in Barcelona from 5th – 9th September.

The congress was organized by the University of Barcelona with 400 attendees from about 40 countries including many of the world’s leading wildlife biologists. The general topic of the congress was “Human-wildlife conflicts and peace-building strategies”.

ECO-LAND and BAC labs participated in the discussions held in the workshop about “reconciling agricultural management, small game production and biodiversity conservation: recommendations for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform” and contributed with oral presentations and posters providing new data about common quail (Coturnix coturnix) distribution, migration phenology and population dynamics, and giving recommendations for quail hunting management in Western Europe.

En català or click here for more info!

Workshop: Ecological model integration to predict ecosystem responses to global change

From August 16th-18th, ECO-LAND was involved in the organisation of a workshop on ecosystem model integration held at the Université de Québec a Montreal (UQAM) under the umbrella of the recent collaboration between the CTFC and the CEF. The workshop was held in the context of the FONCER project  on the modelling of complex forest ecosystems lead by Christian Messier with the participation of two CTFC researchers, Lluís Brotons and Lluís Coll.

The main aim of the workshop was to discuss general constraints and suggest guidelines for the development of integrated models of ecosystem and biodiversity responses to global change.

En català or click here for more info!

Involvement in the long term ecological research LTER programme

ECO-LAND gets involved into the LTER programme through the TREEBIO project in Aigüestortes.

ECO-LAND members together with other researchers at the CTFC took part in the LTER Spain meeting that was held 16-17th June in Collserola. Magda Pla from the Remote Sensing LABTAG group will act as representative of the group promoting long term monitoring by means of remote sensing tools.

En català or click here for more info!

Novel models workshop: Exploring the frontiers of ecological modelling

ECO-LAND attended the Novel Model workshop, 6-10th June in Lisbon, Portugal. In this workshop, organised by DIVERSITAS, present frontiers in (ecological) modelling of biodiversity were identified.  The main objective of the workshop was to discuss the state of the art of methods currently applied to derive projections of global change impacts on biodiversity at different spatial scales.

DIVERSITAS is an international research programme aiming at integrating biodiversity science for human well-being. The workshop is included within the bioDISCOVERY core program, aimed at providing a framework to the scientific community to enable them to make breakthroughs in assessing, monitoring, understanding and predicting biodiversity change.

En català or click here for more info!

Risk assessment analysis workshop: methods and applications for evaluating biological invasions

An exploratory workshop from the European Science Foundation on risk assessment analysis will take place in Girona from 17 to 20th April 2011.

The workshop, coorganized by the CTFC, is led by Núria Roura-Pascual and participated by other components of the ECO-LAND lab and MONTES project. The workshop will gather about 20 international researchers and contribute to increase our understanding of the procedures and methods required to design efficient risk analyses. It will also identify future areas of research and methodological improvements to guide scientific investigations. Further the workshop will examine the implementation of risk analyses for preventing the impacts of biological invasions, and assess the merits and drawbaks of policy instruments derived from risk analyses to improve current management practices.

Finally the workshop aims at establishing a network of researchers working on risk analysis to increase the exchange of information and promote collaborations amongst researchers, but also between researchers and environmental consultants.

En català or click here for more info!

Contributions to the Spanish Ornithology Congress 2010

The Biodiversity and Animal Conservation lab with the Biodiversity and Landscape Ecology lab participated in the 20th Congress of Spanish Ornithology in Tremp.

The Congress was organized by SEO/BirdLife and the town council of Tremp. Since 4th to 8th of December more than 300 ornithologist and bird’s watchers shared their experiences and views about the world of birds in Tremp. “Mountain birds” was the main subject in this edition, although other interesting questions related to birds were also discussed.

The two groups from the Biodiversity department at the CTFC participated with six oral communications and two posters (see the descriptions below). The poster named “Application of un-manned airplane (UAV) in bird monitoring” by Francesc Sardà won the prize of the best poster of the Congress. In addition, two members of the department took part in two different round table discussion, Miguel Clavero took part in the “Mountain birds and climatic change” table and Gerard Bota took part in the round table discussion entitled “Birds and Agriculture: the irrigated land conflict”.

More info: BAC Lab original post.

En català or click here for more info!

18th conference of the European Bird Census Council

ECO-LAND members have attended and significantly contributed to the 18th Conference held in Cáceres, Spain, between 22-26th March.

The conference was a meeting place for ornithologists and conservation biologists all over Europe who reported on last news regarding mapping and monitoring of birds all across de continent.

Elena Lopez-Zozaya presented DINDIS monitoring efforts aimed at detecting bird community patterns of change in arees affected by fire in Catalonia. Francesc Sardà presented recent applications of remote sensing data on dynamic bird distribution modelling of quail populations. Other presentations by Olatz Aizpurua and companions from the Catalan ornithological institute presented recent devolpments on mapping applicatons and news on monitoring programs run in Catalonia. Finally, Lluís Brotons was involved in the launch of new exciting initiatives aiming at producing pan-European maps and a new European breeding bird atlas.

-------------------------------------

En català or click here for more info!

Workshop: SCALES meeting in Solsona

From November 17-19th there will be a meeting of the EU project Scales.

This meeting will take place at the CTFC headquarters in Solsona and will discuss the development of large scale biodiversity traits to be used in various modelling exercises.

En català or click here for more info!

7th Conference of the European Ornithologist's Union, Switzerland

Between 21 to 26th August, Lluís Brotons will attend the 7th conference of the EOU in Zurich Switzerland.

Lluís Brotons has been invited as a keynote speaker to the symposium
"Advances in ornithological knowledge through species distribution modelling".

The presentation, entitled "Predicting bird distribution in mediterranean dynamic landscapes in a context of global change: challenges and the way forward" will review the advances in the comprenhension of the key mechanisms behind the responses of species distribution to changes in Mediterranean landscapes driven by land abandonment and fire.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Entre els propers 21 i 26 d'agost, Lluís Brotons assistirà a la 7a conferència de la EOU (Unió Europea d'Ornitòlegs) a Zurich Suissa com a convidat a un dels simposis organitzats.

En català or click here for more info!