Gian Luca Spadoni is a PhD candidate at the University of Turin (UniTO, Italy), funded by the Sustainable Development and Climate Change programme of the University School for Advanced Studies – IUSS Pavia. So far in FIRE-ADAPT, he’s done two secondments. He’s been in Montpellier, France, working in the laboratory of Imma Oliveras, at the botAnique et Modélisation de l’Architecture des Plantes et des végétations research unit of the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD-AMAP). Gian Luca has also been in Chapada dos Guimarães National Park, Brazil, hosted by Luiz Gustavo Gonçalves, from the Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio).
From his secondments he highlights the possibility of learning the concepts he is studying through firsthand experiences and from directly talking to people. As an early-stage researcher, these experiences are of great value for both his personal and professional lives.
What is your doctoral research about?
My doctoral research is about how complex socio-ecological systems, which are regulated by interacting anthropogenic and ecological variables, drive wildfires. In each one of my thesis chapters, I am focusing on a different specific socio-ecological process. For example, in one of my chapters, I’m trying to understand how vegetation loss through land conversion is influencing fires in the Brazilian Cerrado.
What were the goals of your secondments?
Before starting in FIRE-ADAPT, I focused on subtropical ecosystems, especially on Mediterranean environments. Thanks to our project, together with Imma Oliveras (IRD-AMAP) and Luiz Gustavo (ICMBio), I could include the tropical biome of the Brazilian Cerrado in my PhD research, by complementing theoretical and practical approaches we developed in France and Brazil, respectively. To the study led by Imma I’m contributing a focus on the governance processes conditioning the fire regime in the Cerrado. In Brazil, I gained local and practical knowledge and gave a more scientific insight.
What activities did you carry out?
In France, one-to-one and team meetings, presentations and learning new technical skills related to the study of socio-ecological processes through geospatial analyses.
In Brazil, the activities were more field-orientated and allowed me to understand how local practitioners deal with fire in a biome as complex and flammable as the Cerrado. For example, I learnt how to monitor wildfires from local firefighters, I also local researchers, and all that has been very useful to understand what the actual processes happening in the Cerrado are.
What did you take home from your secondments?
I had read about the Cerrado and looked at images of it, but the experience I got from having been there is clearly much more enriching. For example, during a prescribed burn I saw how powerfully fire spreads through the vegetation. I also witnessed what happens when fire is excluded from areas that would benefit from it. For example, in the Cerrado-Amazon transition, the absence of fire causes Amazonian plant species to invade the Cerrado side, which results in the overgrowth of woody plants and biodiversity loss, altering some of the environmental conditions of this part of the Cerrado. Now I am much more aware of what impacts fire can have and how this biome needs it to function.
In Brazil I got information I couldn’t find in papers, like that from the people from local communities I talked to, which they had received from their grandparents on their turn. An example is the traditional use of fire for grazing or small-crop maintenance.
Also, the secondments gave me the resources to connect with researchers with whom I share interests, so it allowed me to enlarge my network.
What secondment-derived plans you all have?
A paper co-authored alongside other FIRE-ADAPT fellows.
Also, more secondments – I am planning to go back to Brazil and to welcome my hosts in Italy!
More about your experiences in France and Brazil
Something that caught your attention about these countries
France: the “internationality” and openness of Imma’s lab.
Brazil: The care and the resources they invest in monitoring and preserving their landscapes.
Any new words you learnt
In French: crémaillère, a house-warming party.
In Brazilian: fica à vontade, go and help yourself, take as much as you want.
A meal that you liked
French: tielle sétoise, like a salty cake with octopus and tomato inside.
Brazilian: agua de coco, a delicious coconut juice served in the nut itself.
A memory to keep foreverIn Brazil, one night we slept in the field in one of the facilities of the practitioners, a kind of wooden cabin in the middle of the Cerrado. We were surrounded by plant and animal species that were completely new to me, like monkeys. We had traditional food there. We were kind of isolated from time and space, and it felt very special.