My research focuses on understanding the environmental dynamics of various ecosystems over long temporal scales. My primary objective is to define baseline conditions and thresholds of environmental resilience during the Quaternary. I hold an interdisciplinary approach, integrating evolutionary biology, biodiversity, and community ecology. Specifically, my work is threefold:
- Identification of disturbances that, over extended time scales, serve as thresholds inducing changes in ecosystem balance. My doctoral work pioneers the use of paleo-latrines as sedimentary record archives and defines climatic thresholds.
- Correlation of these balance changes with past climatic and biological processes to generate quantitatively robust environmental reconstructions suitable for use in predictive scenarios of Global Change. This effort has yielded transferable data for nature conservation, particularly in African national parks.
- Derived from the aforementioned, I quantify the dynamics of past disturbances, notably fire, as one of the most critical terrestrial processes in current Global Change. This research line has facilitated the generation of effective data for informed decision-making regarding prescribed burning regulation and fire regimes in the Ethiopian mountains.
Spain