Pablo Manzano's home page

Welcome to my personal home page!

I am Pablo Manzano, a PhD Ecologist by the Autonomous University of Madrid. My full name is actually Pablo Manzano Baena. Those two surnames sound a litte bit weird for most of the world, especially anglesaxons, but you can learn more about Spanish naming customs here. I am originally a terrestrial ecologist, with interests centered around rangelands, plant-animal interactions, dispersal processes, biodiversity and evolution. My profile has evolved by incorporating interst on cultural landscapes, pastoralism and agricultural extensification, food systems, and international development. According to a 2017 special issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, I can be defined as a Translational Ecologist.

During my studies I have had the honour to spend time at the University of Jena in Germany, where I enjoyed a very nice Erasmus year and where I started with my first research experiences at their Institute of Ecology. My PhD versed on ecological relationships between sheep and pastureland vegetation in Central Spain. During the course of my PhD I also had the pleasure to spend some time at Lincoln's Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua in Christchurch, New Zealand and the Biology Department at Texas State University at San Marcos in the United States, where I enjoyed also very nice short research stays and learnt from great scientists.

I haven't just been active in the field of scientific research, but I also have applied the knowledge I have gathered there in the field of international development cooperation. I started in Bosnia & Herzegovina, namely in the south of the country (Eastern Herzegovina), around Mostar and Trebinje. With AECID funds and hired by the VCF, I have had great local collaborators, especially the Youth Club New Wave, whose infrastructure (physical as well as intellectual) I constantly used.

Due to my experience in both fields, pure research and applied knowledge, I happily worked as Global Coordinator of the World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism (WISP) during three and a half years and until January 2014, based at the Nairobi headquarters of the ESARO office of the IUCN. In the same line of work, and with a further emphasis in Civil Society empowerment, I later coordinated the Pastoralist Knowledge Hub at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome from October 2014 to October 2015. I am currently working as an international independent consultant on pastoralism, livestock and environmental issues, as well as on scientific research in ecology of grazed ecosystems. Since 2018 I am also leading the research agenda of Asociación Biomas and since 2019 I am a visiting researcher at the Global Change and Conservation interdisciplinary research group of the University of Helsinki. Between 2020 and 2021 I developed a post-doctoral project there, at the same time being an Associate researcher at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3). In 2021 I was awarded an Ikerbasque Fellowship, therefore moving into a full-time job at BC3 in January 2022.

In this site you have a list of my publications and links where you can download most of them. If you want to contact me, write an e-mail to pablo.manzano"at"bc3research.org