Maria Almagro

Biography

"María Almagro is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3). She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Sciences (University of Granada, 2003) and a PhD in Soil Conservation and Sustainable Management (University of Murcia, 2011). She has worked on several projects at the Soil and Water Conservation Research Group from the Spanish Research Council (CEBAS-CSIC), at the National Museum of Natural History (MNCN-CSIC), at the Department of Sustainable Crop Production from the University of the Sacred Heart (Italy), at the Department of Environmental and Land Management from the University of Aveiro (Portugal), and at the Departments of Plant Physiology and Agricultural Ecology from the University of Bayreuth (Germany). Her research focuses on sustainable land management practices and related ecosystem services (e.g. crop production, soil erosion control, soil fertility and water availability enhancement, and climate change mitigation and adaptation). She combines field measurements and modelling to investigate the impacts of changes in climate, land use and land management on soil carbon sequestration. Her main research interests are related to: (1) the adoption of integrated and sustainable farming systems for environmental and socio-economic sustainable development; (2) the prediction and understanding of the major drivers of soil respiration in drylands at both temporal and spatial scales; (3) understanding the response of plant litter decomposition to climate change and photodegradation in drylands based on field measurements and modelling; and (4) understanding the role of soil erosion in the carbon cycle from hillslopes to the catchment scale. She’s actively involved in promoting the adoption of integrated and sustainable farming systems through demonstration of its agro-environmental and socio-economic benefits by using a combination of tailored trainings, stakeholder engagement, participatory monitoring and dissemination of information on their multiple benefits for the environment, farm profits and society in general. "

Research Interest

Sustainable Land Management; Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation