Role in FIRE-ADAPT: Project´s Principal Investigator at the Universitat de LLeida
Organisation: Universitat de Lleida (UdL)
What motivated me to join FIRE-ADAPT
My scientific work has to do with analysing, at different spatial and temporal scales, the impacts of environmental and anthropogenic disturbances, such as forest management, climate change, and wildfires, on forest ecosystems and, in turn, how this affects biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services.
The focus of the project has a lot to do with our scope of work and the lines of research that we are promoting in a context of climate change and adaptation to it. Also, the scale of this: it´s not a project only in Catalonia, Spain, or Europe, but it has a transoceanic vocation that has to do with something that is as obvious as fire management. We are moving towards a world in which many areas are going to have an increasing incidence of wildfires, and fire management is going to be one of the fundamental issues.
About the project´s gathering at the Spain Study Hub
What partners from other countries visiting us could have taken home
Another interest of the project is its vocation to generate a network. I would say that the time spent by researchers from different places in Spain, during the activities of the Study Hub, served above all to connect people, explore, and better identify common points and interests to develop joint research in the future. Also, to know a little about the problems we have with some wildfires here in the Mediterranean context and, at the same time, all the integrated fire management actions that have been carried out, and what have been the factors that have influenced the evolution and progress in fire management in our Mediterranean environments.
What we could have taken home from partners from other countries visiting us
We took even more knowledge than we contributed. Actually, these exchanges serve to know more first-hand what colleagues from other countries explain about everything that is being done in other places with problems or underlying causes that are different in part and similar in part. Above all, they also serve to realise that here we have a long way to go. Countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, or Bolivia, with different points of view from the field of governance, the application of new technologies, or the scale of work in terms of different fire management alternatives, are ahead of us and we have a lot to learn from them.
What impact the activities of the Study Hub can have in the country
I believe that the aim is that it doesn´t impact Spain particularly, but, since it is a multinational project, it impacts all countries. The objective of this transnational, multinational, or transcontinental effort is to end up reinforcing in some way all the discourse and all the political incidence in the need to address the challenges that are put before us with integrated fire management at different spatial scales: in stands, landscapes, regions, etc. and also transnationally. The interesting thing is that there is global coordination and greater awareness of the need for comprehensive fire management on a large scale to face the challenges associated with climate change and global change and that, in part come hand in hand with some types of wildfires.
This is me
Favourite food: traditional dishes, like snails.
Favourite film: within the framework of the project, with colleagues from Argentina, A Place in the World, by Adolfo Aristarain.
Favourite singer or band: Pearl Jam
I admire: my granny
Superpower I´d like to have: have and transmit peace.
In Spain, I´d take you to: my home