The Section of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology welcomes Dr. Filipe Bernardo, who is undertaking a three-month research stay within the framework of the Portuguese FCT Mobility programme for international exchange of post-doctoral researchers. Dr. Bernardo is a researcher at the Institute of Volcanology and Risk Assessment and the F Gaspar Frutuoso Foundation of the University of the Azores, which is also a partner in the ongoing Horizon Europe project SELINA.
Building on this collaboration, the main goal of this research stay is to advance the assessment of ecosystem service sustainability in small and medium islands such as the Azores, whose populations are heavily reliant on a limited and spatially constrained supply of ecosystem services, leading to exacerbated conflict between ecological conservation and socio-economic development. Island territories still remain underrepresented in ES assessments due to methodological challenges, including data scarcity, fine-scale ecological heterogeneity, and difficulties in capturing temporal dynamics and uncertainty.
Dr. Bernardo will address the following key objectives:
- identifying key drivers and pressures affecting ecosystem condition and ES provision in island contexts.
- analyzing trade-offs under contrasting development and conservation-oriented scenarios.
- examining temporal dynamics and sources of uncertainty in ES assessments.
- contributing to methodological adaptations tailored to island territories.
The collaboration strengthens international research exchange and contributes to the development of more robust ecosystem service assessments to support the sustainable use of natural capital, particularly in vulnerable regions such as EU outermost territories.
The Section of Physiscal Geography and Landscape Ecology looks forward to the scientific exchange and collaboration during this research stay and wishes Dr. Bernardo every success!
