Grant of the research project DynaFun
Xavier Pons is one of the principal investigators of the "DynaFun" project, granted by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities.
The project titled: "Vegetation dynamics in the Iberian landscapes from a structural and a functional perspective: assessing early warning signals of ecosystem disturbance (DynaFun)", granted by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, has a duration of three years and allows the allocation of predoctoral students.
It is a coordinated project between two partners, UAB (coordinating entity) and CREAF. The respective Principal Investigators of the subprojects from each institution are:
- Xavier Pons (UAB-Geography) and Miquel Ninyerola (UAB-Botany)
- Joan Pino and Lluís Pesquer (CREAF)
Brief summary of the project: Unplanned landscape changes in vegetation may strongly affect ecosystem functioning, influencing land sustainability. Moreover, a comprehensive understanding of these changes, including their magnitudes, locations, timings and drivers from a structural and functional perspective, is currently lacking. To address this challenge, DynaFun aims at improving the understanding and monitoring of vegetation changes in the Iberian Peninsula through two different approaches: the exploration of structural changes in land use and land cover (LULC) types and the exploration of functional changes based on ecosystem functional attributes (EFA) and ecosystem functional types (EFT).
Congratulations to the GRUMETS research group and CREAF!
Image reference:
The image shows a fire that burned an area mainly occupied by coniferous forests and dry herbaceous crops around Artés. The fire occurred on August 5, 2017, burning 362.84 ha. There is a remote sensing image from just before, right after the fire, and the recovery visible in an image taken less than a month ago.