Juan A. Blanco

Juan A. Blanco, researcher with the Ecology and Environment team at the Natural Environment Sciences Department of the Public University of Navarre (UPNA), has been chosen by the European Commission for the Marie Curie People Work Actions Awards, within its VII Framework Programme. After a rigorous process of evaluation in which projects from all over Europe competed, the Research Executive Agency awarded funding to this researcher, who will work on a project to study how climate change can affect the growth of Scots pine and beech in the Navarre Pyrenees forest.

Marie Curie Actions aim to encourage, qualitatively and quantitatively, human potential in research in Europe, trying to create an attractive model of career research, motivating European researchers to remain in Europe and attracting the best ones from the rest of the world to the continent.

Juan A. Blanco will receive 25,000 euros annually for the Career Integration Grant project entitled “ECOPYREN3: integration of ecological processes in forest models to assess long-term effects of management and global change on forests in South-western Europe”, to be undertaken at the UPNA. This funding will enable taking the four years of the project on board, and in which the links between climate, forest management and forest growth in the Navarre Pyrenees will be investigated. “Climate changes”, explained Mr. Blanco, “can have an important effect on the productivity of forests, with consequences both ecological, on changing the structure of the forests where more than 100 different plant species live, as well as economic, as they can affect the production of timber or firewood and biomass for energy production”.

* Elhuyar translation, published in www.basqueresearch.com