Researchers from Catalonia visit CATIE to exchange experiences in forest management and ecosystem services

• The recent stay of Mar Pallarés and the visit of Natalia Revilla in 2023 are part of an exchange within the framework of the DecisionES project for cooperation in forest management

Thanks to an exchange program as part of the DecisionES (Decision Support for the Supply of Ecosystem Services under Global Change) project, the Forests and Biodiversity in Productive Landscapes Unit (UBBPP) of CATIE has received the visit of researchers from the Forestry Science and Technology Center of Catalonia (CTFC), Spain, to exchange knowledge in support of research and scientific dissemination.

The DecisionES project seeks to strengthen global cooperation in the field of forest management and ecosystem services. Its main objective is to improve planning and policy analysis in this field through the development of an integrated and multifunctional approach to the provision of ecosystem services, effectively contributing to provide services in times of climate change.

"In our area of the Mediterranean and around the world, climate change is having many effects and, therefore, being able to understand and make simulations with models to be able to have facilities in decision making is essential to ensure that forests can continue to give us all their products and services that we as a society need," said Mar Pallarés Pascual, Forestry Engineer of the Multifunctional Forest Management Program of CTFC, who stayed at CATIE for several weeks in the months of January and February 2024.

Pallarés' stay was aimed at improving the understanding of forest dynamics and finding synergies between the work of the UBBPP, CATIE and CTFC. "We have worked a lot on my part to explain the Potential Biodiversity Index, and CATIE has shared with me its experiences in the management of secondary forests and mature forests," she said. As part of her work, she also gave a talk to the community of CATIE students and researchers entitled "Silviculture for biodiversity conservation in European forests".

 CATIE's UBBPP also received in September 2023 the visit of Natalia Revilla, PhD student in ecology and bird conservation in agricultural areas of the CTFC, who gave a talk on "Fallow management in the conservation of birds in agricultural areas" and is collaborating in the publication of a scientific article entitled Stable landscapes help maintain stable bird communities, which includes the analysis of 11 years of data collected by CATIE's Bird Monitoring Program (PMA) and whose results were presented at the European Conference on Tropical Ecology held this February in Lisbon, Portugal.

At the end of 2024 a visit is expected from Master David Guixé, conservation biologist and specialist in bats, with whom UBBPP expects to carry out field monitoring tasks, training workshops on monitoring techniques, and talks on these organisms, as well as on the work developed by the Landscape Dynamics and Biodiversity Program of the CTFC where David Guixé works.

For Pallarés, the experience of being at CATIE and sharing with its researchers has been very enriching. "On the one hand, I have been able to learn first-hand about an ecosystem that is very different from the one we have in Spain and Europe, and on the other hand, on a personal level, having more direct contact with people makes it much easier to exchange ideas. In that sense, CATIE is a center that has very positive operating dynamics," he commented.

The DecisionES project involves 17 institutions from countries such as Spain, the United States, Portugal, Chile, Canada, Brazil, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Costa Rica in a five-year exchange program to promote collaboration and knowledge exchange between researchers in Europe and the Americas.