Francisco Moreira
Universidade do Porto, CIBIO/InBIO, Department Member
The goal of this task was to identify and characterise novel methods for biodiversity monitoring, and to assess their suitability for large scale deployment across Europe. To address this goal we combined extensive literature searches... more
The goal of this task was to identify and characterise novel methods for biodiversity monitoring, and to assess their suitability for large scale deployment across Europe. To address this goal we combined extensive literature searches with expert consultation, namely using a survey and through an online workshop. The outcome of our searches is summarised in a metadatabase, which includes 282 methods or method components, which have been classified according to EBV classes addressed, target taxa, and broad method type the method relates to. We then consulted experts within the EuropaBON network and beyond, on the advantages and challenges associated with each of these novel methods, as well as their technology readiness level. In combination, our approaches revealed a wealth of novel methods and a highly active research field, with extensive emerging innovation on several fronts. However, it also revealed high variability in technology readiness, with lack of validation being a preva...
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The Iberian Peninsula has an extensive record of species displaying strong genetic structure as a result of their survival in isolated pockets throughout the Pleistocene ice ages. We used mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data to analyze... more
The Iberian Peninsula has an extensive record of species displaying strong genetic structure as a result of their survival in isolated pockets throughout the Pleistocene ice ages. We used mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data to analyze phylogeographic patterns in endemic land snails from a valley of central Portugal (Vale da Couda), putatively assigned to Candidula coudensis, that show an exceptionally narrow distributional range. The genetic survey presented here shows the existence of five main mitochondrial lineages in Vale da Couda that do not cluster together suggesting independent evolutionary histories. Our results also indicate a departure from the expectation that species with restricted distributions have low genetic variability. The putative past and contemporary models of geographic distribution of Vale da Couda lineages are compatible with a scenario of species co-existence in more southern locations during the last glacial maximum (LGM) followed by a post-LGM northe...
Research Interests: Conservation Biology, Phylogeography, Biology, Ecology, Malacology (Biology), and 13 moreMedicine, Pleistocene, Genetic Diversity, Population, Genetic Structure, Gastropods, Species Distribution, Last Glacial Maximum, Endemic species, Evolutionary Studies, Terrestrial Gastropods, Land snail, and Landsnails
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The improved knowledge on species distribution patterns is widely accepted as of foremost importance in the fields of climate change science and conservation biology. Indeed, research on species distribution modelling has boomed in the... more
The improved knowledge on species distribution patterns is widely accepted as of foremost importance in the fields of climate change science and conservation biology. Indeed, research on species distribution modelling has boomed in the last 10 years, with the development of complex algorithms capable of dealing with typically biased or incomplete ecological data. Remote sensing data products provide unique opportunities for use in species distribution models, particularly by enabling the detailed prediction of species occurrence maps over wide areas, at various scales. The panoply of processing methods and of existing remote sensing data products however, can make the choice of the best suitable method or product particularly difficult. In this paper, we compare the use of different data products in a species distribution modelling case study, using Boosted Regression Trees. For this purpose, both model predictive performances and prediction maps are compared. While no significant d...
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Cork oak Quercus suber forests, which are of great ecological and economic importance in the Mediterranean Basin, have been increasingly affected by wildfires in the last decades. The occurrence of wood-boring insect attacks following... more
Cork oak Quercus suber forests, which are of great ecological and economic importance in the Mediterranean Basin, have been increasingly affected by wildfires in the last decades. The occurrence of wood-boring insect attacks following fire may be a critical factor affecting tree survival and forest recovery. The ambrosia beetle Platypus cylindrus has been considered the major insect pest capable of attacking and killing adult Q. suber trees, but there is no information about host selection and colonization behavior of the beetle in burned oak stands. After a wildfire that occurred in July 2013 in central Portugal, an apparent outbreak of bark beetles (dominated by P. cylindrus but also with Xyleborus sp.) was observed. In order to evaluate the extent and pattern of the attacks we monitored nearly 500 Q. suber trees, including burned and unburned individuals. Early 2014, we assessed several tree and site characteristics, as well as the presence of recent bark beetle activity by regis...
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Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been developed to help decision makers choose between actions that require reaching a compromise between criteria of different weights. We adapted this method to evaluate the effect of a range... more
Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been developed to help decision makers choose between actions that require reaching a compromise between criteria of different weights. We adapted this method to evaluate the effect of a range of forest management alternatives (FMA) - as defined by the European Integrated Project Eforwood - on risks for forest health. Risk is defined as the interaction between forest vulnerability (a combination of susceptibility and exposure) to a hazard and the likelihood of the hazard occurring. Specific forest vulnerabilities to a series of abiotic (wind, fire and snow) and biotic (insect pests, pathogenic fungi and herbivores) hazards were defined and subsequently weighted by corresponding hazard likelihood. Multi-criteria risk analyses (MCRA) were applied to eight types of managed forests in Europe (three forest biomes: Atlantic, Continental and Boreal, and five tree species: Scots pine, maritime pine, Norway spruce, Sitka spruce and Eucalyptus sp.) ...
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Guy Pe’er1,2,* Sebastian Lakner3, Ralf Seppelt4, Peter Bezák5, Aletta Bonn1,2,6, Elena D. Concepción7,8, Felix Creutzig9,10, Claus-Heinrich Daub11, Mario Díaz7, Petra Dieker12, Nico Eisenhauer1,13, Gregor Hagedorn14, Bernd... more
Guy Pe’er1,2,* Sebastian Lakner3, Ralf Seppelt4, Peter Bezák5, Aletta Bonn1,2,6, Elena D. Concepción7,8, Felix Creutzig9,10, Claus-Heinrich Daub11, Mario Díaz7, Petra Dieker12, Nico Eisenhauer1,13, Gregor Hagedorn14, Bernd Hansjürgens1,15, Gabriele Harrer-Puchner16, Irina Herzon17, Thomas Hickler18, Jens Jetzkowitz19,20, Yanka Kazakova21, Pavel Kindlmann22, Mathias Kirchner23, Alexandra-Maria Klein24, Sven Linow25, Ângela Lomba26, José Vicente López-Bao27, Matteo Metta28, Manuel B. Morales29, Francisco Moreira30, Anne-Christine Mupepele24, Alberto Navarro27, Rainer Oppermann31, Ilona Rac32, Norbert Röder33, Martina Schäfer34, Clelia Sirami35, Charlotte Streck36, Tanja Šumrada32, Katja Tielbörger37, Emil Underberg38, Georg Wagener-Lohse39, and Franz Baumann40.
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During the last decades, climate and land use changes led to an increased prevalence of megafires in Mediterranean-type climate regions (MCRs). Here, we argue that current wildfire management policies in MCRs are destined to fail. Focused... more
During the last decades, climate and land use changes led to an increased prevalence of megafires in Mediterranean-type climate regions (MCRs). Here, we argue that current wildfire management policies in MCRs are destined to fail. Focused on fire suppression, these policies largely ignore ongoing climate warming and landscape-scale buildup of fuels. The result is a ‘firefighting trap’ that contributes to ongoing fuel accumulation precluding suppression under extreme fire weather, and resulting in more severe and larger fires. We believe that a ‘business as usual’ approach to wildfire in MCRs will not solve the fire problem, and recommend that policy and expenditures be rebalanced between suppression and mitigation of the negative impacts of fire. This requires a paradigm shift: policy effectiveness should not be primarily measured as a function of area burned (as it usually is), but rather as a function of avoided socio-ecological damage and loss.
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It's time for sustainable, environmental performance
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Conserving biodiversity on farmland is an essential element of worldwide efforts for reversing the global biodiversity decline. Common approaches involve improving the natural component of the landscape by increasing the amount of natural... more
Conserving biodiversity on farmland is an essential element of worldwide efforts for reversing the global biodiversity decline. Common approaches involve improving the natural component of the landscape by increasing the amount of natural and seminatural habitats (e.g., hedgerows, woodlots, and ponds) or improving the production component of the landscape by increasing the amount of biodiversity-friendly crops. Because these approaches may negatively impact on economic output, it was suggested that an alternative might be to enhance the diversity (compositional heterogeneity) or the spatial complexity (configurational heterogeneity) of land cover types, without necessarily changing composition. Here, we develop a case study to evaluate these ideas, examining whether managing landscape composition or heterogeneity, or both, would be required to achieve conservation benefits on avian diversity in open Mediterranean farmland. We surveyed birds in farmland landscapes of southern Portuga...
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In this paper, lLong-term impacts of meadow abandonment scenarios on plant diversity were forecasted for High Nature Value farmland in northern Portugal, and implications for conservation planning and agri-environmental management are... more
In this paper, lLong-term impacts of meadow abandonment scenarios on plant diversity were forecasted for High Nature Value farmland in northern Portugal, and implications for conservation planning and agri-environmental management are addressed. Vegetation patches representative of forests, meadows and edges, on mesic and wet soils, were surveyed for vascular plant diversity. Species richness and composition were compared across vegetation types, and additive partitioning was used to quantify hierarchic components of species richness. The implications of total and partial meadow abandonment were simulated according to landscape outcomes predicted for each scenario, and confirmed with a Monte-Carlo resampling. Forests hosted the highest numbers of species, as well as of exclusive species. Nonetheless, from the total pool (213), 21.6% were exclusive to meadows. Vegetation types generally shared small proportions of their species pools. With total meadow abandonment, a drastic decrease in total species richness (41.1%) and in endemic species richness (loss of 20.8%) was forecasted. However, only 12.3% of all species were forecasted to disappear under scenarios of partial abandonment. Landscape-level plant diversity can, therefore, be maintained by promoting farmland mosaics, even if the loss of scattered meadows in favour of native forests could be acceptable. Agri-environmental schemes should thus prioritize the maintenance of landscape heterogeneity.
Research Interests: Geography, Plant Biology, Monte Carlo, Environmental Management, Ecology, and 15 moreMediterranean, Conservation planning, Plant Diversity, Community Assembly, Species Richness, Endemic species, Mediterranean Climate, Agri-environmental Schemes, Abandonment, Long Term Effect, Vascular Plants, Simulating, Landscape Heterogeneity, Farmland, and ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT
Research Interests: Engineering, Geography, Environmental Change, Plant Diversity, Environmental Sciences, and 15 moreLand Use, Nature Conservation, Patch Size, Species Traits, Species Diversity, Species Richness, Environmental Gradient, Agricultural intensification, Functional Group, Landscape Structure, Physical Environment, Plant species, Vascular Plants, Plant Species Diversity, and Agri-environmental policy
Research Interests: Geography, Climate Change, Environmental policy, Land management, Environmental Management, and 15 moreClimate, Environmental Resource Management, Humans, Land Cover, Land, Economic Impact, Landscape Management, Landscape change, Land cover change, Fires, Fire Hazard, Fire Risk, Conservation of Natural Resources, Landscape Changes, and Fire regime
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Research Interests: Geography, Chemistry, Agroforestry, Plant Diversity, Biological Sciences, and 15 moreEnvironmental Sciences, Forest Management, Species Richness, Native Plants, Forest Structure, Ecosystem service, Management Practice, Alien species, Agricultural landscape, Oak Woodland, Dairy Farm, Forest fragments, Plant species richness, Tree Species, and Redundancy Analysis
Page 1. ORIGINAL PAPER Characterization of wildfires in Portugal S. Marques • JG Borges • J. Garcia-Gonzalo • F. Moreira • JMB Carreiras • MM Oliveira • A. Cantarinha • B. Botequim • JMC Pereira Received: 19 February 2010 ...
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Rare species have restricted geographic ranges, habitat specialization, and/or small population sizes. Datasets on rare species distribution usually have few observations, limited spatial accuracy and lack of valid absences; conversely... more
Rare species have restricted geographic ranges, habitat specialization, and/or small population sizes. Datasets on rare species distribution usually have few observations, limited spatial accuracy and lack of valid absences; conversely they provide comprehensive views of species distributions allowing to realistically capture most of their realized environmental niche. Rare species are the most in need of predictive distribution modelling but also the most difficult to model. We refer to this contrast as the “rare species modelling ...
Research Interests: Geography, Computer Science, Climate Change, Conservation, Modeling, and 14 moreEndemism, Biological Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Species Distribution Modelling, Biological Conservation, Rare species, Population Size, Species Distribution, Endemic species, Conservation Management, Statistical Model, Geographic Range, Ensemble Forecasting, and predictive distribution
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Research Interests: Forestry, Fire Ecology, Modeling, Forest Ecology And Management, Forest Ecology, and 16 moreSustainable forest management, Biological Sciences, Tree Mortality, Environmental Sciences, Models, Model Selection, Wildfire, Postfire Mortality, Quercus suber, Ecosystem, First Year, Functional Group, Mediterranean Climate, Mediterranean Basin, Logistic Regression Model, and Western Mediterranean
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In this paper, long-term impacts of meadow abandonment scenarios on plant diversity were forecasted for high nature value farmland in northern Portugal, and implications for conservation planning and agri-environmental management are... more
In this paper, long-term impacts of meadow abandonment scenarios on plant diversity were forecasted for high nature value farmland in northern Portugal, and implications for conservation planning and agri-environmental management are addressed. Vegetation patches representative of forests, meadows and edges, on mesic and wet soils, were surveyed for vascular plant diversity. Species richness and composition were compared across vegetation types, and additive partitioning was used to quantify hierarchic components of species richness. The implications of total and partial meadow abandonment were simulated according to landscape outcomes predicted for each scenario, and confirmed with a Monte-Carlo resampling. Forests hosted the highest number of species, as well as of exclusive species. Nonetheless, from the total pool (213), 21.6% were exclusive to meadows. Vegetation types generally shared small proportions of their species pools. With total meadow abandonment, a drastic decrease in total species richness (41.1%) and in endemic species richness (loss of 20.8%) was forecasted. However, only 12.3% of all species were forecasted to disappear under scenarios of partial abandonment. Landscape-level plant diversity can, therefore, be maintained by promoting farmland mosaics, even if the loss of scattered meadows in favour of native forests could be acceptable. Agri-environmental schemes should thus prioritize the maintenance of landscape heterogeneity.