28/06/2013
SEMINAR OF SUSANA BERNAL FROM THE CEAB-CSIC
On June 27, 2013, the Resources and Ecosystems Research Area of ICRA invited Dr. Susana Bernal from the Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CEAB) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to give the seminar:
"The use of experimental catchments to understand ecosystems function and their response to environmental change".
From the 1960’s, experimental catchments have been used as a basic unit of study for understanding the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Despite its limitations, this empirical approach has become popular in ecology because it provides useful ecological information on water and nutrient use at relevant spatial scales based on simple mass balance principles. When combined with well-designed long-term monitoring, the experimental catchment’s approach can help us to understand the response of forest ecosystems to past and present environmental changes such as climate change or chronic N deposition. Further, we can investigate the role of specific catchment units such as riparian forests and stream ecosystems on nutrient dynamics by designing field experiments based on sets of nested catchments. In this talk, we will provide some examples of the use of experimental catchments in terrestrial and aquatic ecology based on our own research in temperate and mediterranean regions.
Photo from left to right: Susana Bernal (CEAB-CSIC) and Rafael Marcé (Research Scientist of the Resources and Ecosystems ICRA's Research Area)
