IBERIAN FUTURE WINES
Assessing the Future of Our Wines
It is a research project that aim at compiling, centralizing and analyzing data on native winegrape varieties to assess and predict the impacts of climate change on viticulture in the Iberian Peninsula. More specifically, we are collecting data on phenological, enological and agronomic traits and unifying them in a large dataset, that will be used to quantify the effects of climate on the productivity and quality of 16 winegrape varieties that best represent Spanish wines. In advanced stages of the project, predictive models of the maturation capacity of the Iberian varieties will be forecasted for the winegrowing regions of the Iberian Peninsula and the World.
Global Change Ecology & Evolution
Mountain dung beetles and Climate Change
We are analysing the impact that mining could have on the protected areas of the Brazilian Amazon in the near future. With this purpose, we consider the existing and planned mining projects in this territory, and analyse the consequences of the approval of three bills that propose to allow the activity in strictly protected areas, in sustainable use protected areas and in indigenous lands, respectively. On the one hand, we are estimating the deforestation associated with existing mining, both in the extraction areas and in the territories adjacent to them, in order to predict the absolute impact of the activity. On the other hand, we are analysing the impact that the habitat loss associated with mining would have for threatened terrestrial vertebrate species in the biome, in each of the legislative scenarios. We intend to offer objective information on the impact that the different political proposals would have on the conservation of the biome and its threatened fauna. The project is led by Sara Villén-Pérez, funded by the University of Alcalá, and has the collaboration of Universidade Federal de Goiás and Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade.
