ECOLOGIST AND PYROGEOGRAPHER (ecólogo y pirogeógrafo)

I was honored to join the Okavango Wilderness Project field expedition in Lisima (Angola), the main water source of the Okavango Basin. With an international team of researchers and partners, this expedition focuses on advancing Integrated Fire Management through experimental burns, participatory workshops with local communities, and data collection. Together, we aim to bridge science and traditional knowledge, strengthen sustainable fire practices, and install monitoring tools to better understand the link between climate and fire dynamics across Lisima.

Project webpage:

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/society/our-programs/okavango/ 

I am pleased to share that a proposal I lead as Principal Investigator, developed together with colleagues from the GEAT research group, has been selected by the European Space Agency as part of the Cal/Val process for the Biomass satellite, launched this year 2025. Equipped with a P-band synthetic aperture radar, the satellite offers promising capabilities for biomass monitoring. Our project, “Validation of the BIOMASS Forest Disturbance (FD) Product and Its Capacity to Detect Forest Loss Caused by Fire,” will explore its potential to monitor forest loss from fire.

ESA Biomass webpage: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Biomass 

In August, during the dramatic wildfires in the NW Iberian Peninsula, I offered my expertise to leading media outlets including RTVE, BBC, Financial Times, and others, some through direct interviews, others via the Science Media Center. My contributions focused on explaining how we must adapt to increasingly fire-prone landscapes, shaped by rural abandonment, socio-economic shifts, and climate change, which is amplifying extreme thermal droughts such as the one recently experienced.

Access to the most relevant:

BBC, Financial times, La Croix,  RTVE 

We are finalizing the upload of data from our SNIS project to public repositories. For example, we recently submitted data from 60 plots in grasslands and tapia woodlands of Madagascar’s Highlands to the Global Grassy Group database. GGG is an inspiring collaborative initiative that brings together top scientists, notably focused on the tropics, to advance knowledge of biodiversity in the world’s grassy biomes.

Webpage: https://globalgrassygroup.github.io/people/  

We have submitted an article to a Nature family journal showing that pyrodiversity plays a critical role in shaping biodiversity in African savannas. Using data from a long-term fire experiment, we demonstrate that pyrodiversity fosters structural, functional, and taxonomic diversity, emphasizing its importance for ecosystem resilience, management, and services under accelerating environmental change.

Preprint: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6856850/v1  

In February 2025, I transitioned from the University of Lausanne to the University of León, in my hometown of León, Spain. I am currently Assistant professor (Profesor ayudante doctor por vía de excelencia) teaching five subjects within the Bachelor's Degree in Forestry and Natural Environment Engineering, as well as the Master's in Geoinformatics for Natural Resources Management. I'm also proud to be featured in a promotional video highlighting the engineering programs at the university.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19RKPvgHfj/

I was proud to participate as an invited speaker at the international FUEGORED conference, held this year in Salamanca. It was an honour to share the stage with leading voices in fire science, including Dolors Armenteras (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Leonor Calvo (University of León), and Antonio Bento-Gonçalves (University of Minho).

The invited talk was fully dedicated to presenting the results of our SNIS-funded project. With much of our data now analyzed, this was a timely opportunity to situate our work within global fire research efforts and to contribute to an ongoing international dialogue on fire governance and management.

I organized the final event of our SNIS-funded project: a science-management conference held in Antananarivo from 9 to 11 October 2024. Titled “Advances in Landscape Fire Research and Management in Southeast Africa,” the meeting brought together researchers, practitioners, and students for three days of interdisciplinary exchange.

The programme featured a field visit to Ampefy and a day engaging talks by contributors from Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, the U.S., the UK, and Switzerland. Discussions focused on fire governance, the ecological and social roles of fire, and the integration of science, policy, and local knowledge in fire management strategies.

In Mozambique, fires are less frequent compared to Madagascar. However, the main motivations behind fire usage remain similar, except for certain purposes such as maintaining a safe environment free of cobras. We anticipate that the upcoming analyses of our interviews and participatory GIS workshops will offer additional insights.

During our interactions with local communities, there is always an opportunity to address other topics. In the picture, we captured some of the reactions elicited while discussing our cultural disparities regarding natality.