Outreach

Every now and then, I am invited to give lectures for different kinds of audience, from schools to senior researchers. In the last years I was invited by Pavilhão do Conhecimento (2022 and 2023) to meet future scientists of  "Sarah Afonso", "Parque Silva Porto", and "António Nobre" schools.

🌳🚗🐾 Ecology of roads? The meeting with the scientist from the Living Science School of Knowledge Pavilion is always amazing! This week we received the biologist Fernando Ascensão, researcher at the Faculty of Science at the University of Lisbon, who came to share with the students of the 4th grade. the year of Parque Silva Porto and António Nobre Basic Schools the impact that roads, railways and high voltage posts have on biodiversity. There are roads all over the world. In forests and deserts, the amount of communication routes is lower. In the other areas, it is very high, which makes the impact on biodiversity great. The Iberian lynx, for example, was almost extinct. It has been very hard to reintroduce and increase the number of animals, however this mission has been compromised because many lynx are road-killed. Roads separate animals from laying eggs, create noise pollution, and make way for previously inaccessible areas in the forest. However, some infrastructures can also be beneficial, such as the high-voltage pylons where storks build their nests, as we see in many regions of Portugal. But what can we do to lessen this impact? Placing signs at the animal crossing, driving slower on the roads, and building crossings were some of the ideas students came up with! If we all realize the importance of these measures, through Citizen Science, we can pressure Governments and entities to lessen the impacts of roads on biodiversity.