EMF Newsletter December 2025

2025-12-17

EMF Newsletter December 2025

Activity conducted at EMF between 20/06/2025 and 15/12/2025

Basic support activity

  • Programming support: Laia Andreu-Hayles, Guillem Lloberas, Clara Rodríguez (Naturalis)
  • Data management support:
  • Statistical support: J De la Casa (Ph.D. student, J. Peñuelas/S. Nogué), Alejandro Garcia, Anaïs Juliet, Jordi Sardans, Eirini Trypidaki
  • Modelling support: E. Spennati (Ph.D. student, M. Mencuccini), M. Didion-Gency (MSCA, Ecophys)
  • EMF Data and apps support: Ántar Benet

Participation in research projects

  • WILDE (EU - Researchers: J.M. Espelta, L. Brotons): Mentoring post-doc hired for the project (R. Balaguer).
  • IMPROMED (Spain - IPs: M. De Cáceres / J.M. Espelta): Improving process-based models in their capability to forecast responses to drought.
  • DRASTIC (Spain - IP: M. Mencuccini): Tree water use and Drought responses: the roles of allometry, water storage and transport under climate change
  • C4N (EU - IP: A. Broekman): Transfer knowledge and best practices, as well as harmonising policies, to tackle the challenges related to biodiversity protection and climate change.
  • TOFU (Catalunya - IP: J. Oliva (UdL)): Healthier forests for a sustainable future. Assisting the development of vulnerability models for the impact of pests and pathogens.
  • CARDIMED (EU - CREAF coordinator: P. Andrés): Climate Adaptation and Resilience Demonstrated In the MEDiterranean region
  • RESFIRE (Spain - IPs: L. Brotons, S. Fraixedas): Assessing the potential of REStoring ecological FIRe regimes as Nature-based Solution to extreme wildfires in Mediterranean ecosystems.
  • STOIKOS (EU - IP: M. Fernández Martínez) Elemental ecology: towards an element-based functional ecology.
  • BLAUCAT (Catalunya - IP CREAF: Annelies Broekman): Estat actual i pla d’acció del carboni blau a Catalunya.

Participation in transfer projects

  • Contract with Centre de la Propietat Forestal (A. Tovar, J. Vayreda, M. De Cáceres, R. Molowny): Evaluation of the effects of changes in silvicultural practices on carbon sequestration and forest function using modelling approaches.
  • Contracte programa / Oficina Catalana de Canvi Climàtic (M. De Cáceres, J. Vayreda, M. Banqué, R. Molowny): Presentation of project results.
  • Grup de treball de Carboni al Sòl (R. Molowny, Inés Delsman, several CREAF researchers and other 7 Research Centers in Catalonia): Soil carbon modelling for Catalonia (Generalitat).

Network building

  • M. De Cáceres participated in an international workshop Implementing robust regeneration modules in forest models organized by Xavier Morin & Isabelle Maréchaux (Montpellier; 17-19 Nov. 2025).

Training & mentoring

Mentoring:

  • Ph.D level (co-supervision J.M. Espelta): A. Tovar
  • Ph.D level (co-supervision R. Molowny): F. Andrade (CREAF)
  • Post-doc level: R. Balaguer-Romano (WildE and IMPROMED projects)

Software & model development

Design and implementation:

  • Modification of package medfate to improve the representation of seedlings and herbs.
  • Implementation of package Rcentury to run the CENTURY 4.7 soil model from R.
  • Design and implementation of a new package forestindicators, devoted to the estimation of forest metrics and ecosystem services.
  • Design and implementation of dead wood decomposition models (data pre-processing and feasibility evaluation).

New software & update releases

  • New version of package meteoland (v.2.2.5) released on CRAN
  • New version of package medfate (v. 4.8.4) released on CRAN
  • New version of package medfateland (v. 2.8.1) released on CRAN
  • New version of package ecotraj (v. 1.2.0) released on CRAN
  • New version of package meteospain (v. 0.3.0) released on CRAN
  • New beta version of package forestables available on GitHub (https://github.com/emf-creaf/forestables)
  • Update of the Laboratori Forestal Català (LFC) apps:
    • Maintenance of all apps to keep up to date library dependencies and web tools

EMF internal infraestructure maintenance

New datasets in the EMF catalog

External datasets:

  • SeedArc: A Global Archive of Primary Seed Germination data: contains 47,000 germination records from 4500 species.

EMF datasets:

Publications developing/using EMF tools

  • Balaguer-Romano R, Espelta, JM, Brotons L, Aquilué N, De Cáceres M (2025) Wildfire connectivity under drought-induced impacts and landscape management strategies in a Mediterranean region. Journal of Environmental Management 395: 127844 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.127844).

Publications from other collaborations

  • Espelta JM, Viana-Soto A, Molowny-Horas R, De Cáceres M, Selwyn M, Banqué M, Brotons L, Lloret F, Martínez-Vilalta J, Piqué M, Senf C (accepted). Long-term comparison shows protected and non-protected forests differ in harvesting, but not in wildfires or drought-driven dieback. Journal of Applied Ecology.

  • Galloso P, Legendre P, Correa GC, De Cáceres M (2025) Long-term dynamics of the northern Humboldt Current System pelagic fish community: a look into community shifts. Marine Ecology 46: e70048 (https://doi.org/10.1111/maec.70048).

  • Roces-Díaz JV, García-Valdés R, De Cáceres M, Descals A, Hurtado P, Lloret F, Espelta JM, Álvarez-Martínez JM, Batllori E, Martínez-Vilalta J (2025) Water availability, stand structure, and hydraulic trait diversity drive forest stability. Forest Ecology and Management 594: 122946 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2025.122946).

  • Molowny-Horas R, Harati-Asl S, Perez L (2025) Understanding forest insect outbreak dynamics: a comparative analysis of machine learning techniques. Geo-spatial Information Science 1-18

Communication

EMF Online impact 20/06/2025 - 15/12/2025

  • EMF Web:
    • Stats: 1604 visits1 (366 returning) / 3:17 mins average visit duration / 4203 page views
    • Pages most visited: External data (1082 page views) / External models (460 visits) / Software 286 visits)
  • Laboratori Forestal:
    • AllometrApp: 446 visits (317 returning) / 8:14 mins average
    • NFI App: 306 visits (139 returning) / 6:19 mins average
    • DEBOSCAT App: 202 visits (116 returning) / 4:56 mins average
    • CatDroughtApp: 132 visits (88 returning) / 7:19 mins average
    • LiDAR App: 99 visits (27 returning) / 4:30 mins average
    • FES App: 75 visits (19 returning) / 3:02 mins average

  1. “Not bounced visits” (visits that stays more the 1 second and performs more than 1 action, bots and web crawlers are not counted) ↩︎

Ecosystem Modelling Facility
Ecosystem Modelling Facility

WHAT WE DO
  • Provide training and technical support for modelling activities to research groups at CREAF.
  • Develop and promote the use of process-based and empirical models aimed at predicting the response of terrestrial ecosystems to global change at multiple scales from the forest stand to the region.
  • Facilitate discovery of data sets or models relevant for ecosystem modelling activities.
  • Develop tools aimed at facilitating the interoperability between data sources and models, and between different models.
  • Develop and maintain interactive web applications for ecosystem data exploration and visualization.
CONTACT

Campus de Bellaterra (UAB) Edifici C

08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès

EcosystemModellingFacility@creaf.uab.cat

This action is part of the Severo Ochoa "ULandscape" funded in 2019 by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to support Research Centres of Excellence.

©2022-2025 EMF