In 2005, the European Union imposed a ban in trade of wild exotic species as part of a package to control the sprea d of avian flu into the Continent. In a paper published in Science Advances we demonstrate that the ban reduced fluxes of trade in about 90%, from 1.3 million to 130 thousand birds traded. This mighty achievement had non predicted consequences: the market adjusted and new . . . [ Read More ]
Species on the move will change everything
Climate change is causing geographical redistribution of plant and animal species globally. These distributional shifts are leading to new ecosystems and ecological communities, changes that will affect human society. In a recent article published in Science, we review current and future impacts and assess their implications for sustainable development goals. Access to the original article . . . [ Read More ]
New tools for spatial conservation under climate change
Climate change can drive species out of protected areas thus creating new challenges for conservation planning that typically assumes species distributions to remain static once they are protected. Researchers in the lab have been at the forefront of spatial conservation planning, particularly by providing assessments of climate change effects on protected areas (e.g., here, here, and here) and by . . . [ Read More ]
2015 course on spatial conservation prioritisation
Dispersal corridors for Quercus petraea in Iberian Peninsula from a baseline period to 2080 (red stars) and the species modeled climatic suitability (greens) under an optimised conservation plan. Source: Alagador et al., 2014, J. Applied Ecol, 51:703-713. Spatial conservation prioritisation is a scientifically-driven procedure to identify cost effective networks of conservation areas that . . . [ Read More ]
The making of an exhibition
Three years after the exhibition "the making of biodiversity" was inaugurated, the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN) is finally publishing the exhibition's catalogue. The presentation of the catalogue will take place on the 25th of February 2015 at 7 pm in the "Salón de Actos" of the Museum in Madrid. As scientific curator of this exhibition, Miguel Araújo wrote the following introductory . . . [ Read More ]
PhD studentship – Global Biodiversity Conservation Priorities
OPTIMISING GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION PRIORITIES IN A CHANGING WORLD Global environmental changes are causing major changes in the distributions and abundances of species and leading to profound changes in the quantity and quality of habitats and the services provided by ecosystems. Conventional conservation planning methodologies still have limited capacity to handle multiple stressors . . . [ Read More ]
New postdoctoral research fellow – Diogo Alagador
Congratulations to Diogo Alagador who obtained a Postdoctoral Fellowship through the extremely competitive Portuguese FCT programme. Diogo has been developing research in spatial conservation planning since his MSc and PhD and this is his second post doc. In the upcoming three years Diogo will work on global-scale spatial conservation planning for vertebrate and plant species, integrating climate . . . [ Read More ]
Arrábida workshop – Conservation Planning for the 21st Century
Early in the 2000s, Conservation International (through Lee Hannah) organized a series of workshops to discuss the interface between climate change and quantitative spatial conservation prioritisation methodologies. More than 10 years have elapsed since these workshops took place in Montpellier, Évora, and Cape Town and several highly-cited papers were published as a consequence (e.g., Araújo et . . . [ Read More ]
Multiple dimensions of climate change reveal unappreciated impacts on biodiversity
Shrinking ice sheets and melting ice caps are well known consequences of climate change. But a new study reveals that impacts on biodiversity will be just as severe in other regions of the world. When multiple dimensions of climate change are analyzed, different regions emerge as threatened by different aspects of climate change. The tropics, for example, will be highly affected by local changes . . . [ Read More ]