Scientific Advisory Committee

The GRAZELIFE consortium has found a team of scientists willing to advise it during the project. They are specialists in the field of wildfire prevention, agricultural policies, ecosystem services, herbivory and biodiversity.

Dr. Guy Pe’er

Dr. Guy Pe’er is a Conservation biologist, working for many years on biodiversity in the interface between natural, semi-natural habitats, and agricultural areas. Pe’er has empirical experience on grassland biodiversity (e.g. Pe’er & Settele 2008, Pe’er et al. 2011, Papanikolaou et al. 2014) and biodiversity monitoring (e.g. Henle et al. 2013), and much experience in nature-conservation policy in the EU. In the past years he has been working primarily on the Common Agricultural Policy especially with respect to greening (Pe’er et al. 2014, 2017, Zinngrebe et al. 2017), with his current position aiming to develop recommendations for the next CAP with respect to greening, taking consideration of both Ecological and Socio-economic perspectives.

In 2017, Pe’er led a comprehensive „Fitness Check“evaluation of the CAP, with >20 authors assessing the CAP from socio-economic and environmental perspectives (including climate, soil, water, biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as animal welfare). As a follow up, he led an assessment of the EC’s proposal for the CAP post-2020, highlighting risks of the current CAP reform path for environmental performance and sustainability (Pe’er et al. 2019). The study’s approach and literature database, as well as network of cooperation partners across the EU, serve as important corner-stones of the project. G. Pe’er has been working in the EU-funded projects SCALES and EU BON and has much experience in working within EU-wide networks. Language skills: English (near-native), German (proficient), Hebrew (mother tongue). Proficiency in English is well-documented through nearly 50 scientific publications in excellent international journals.

In addition to ULEI, G. Pe’er is also affiliated with two important institutions of high relevance to this project, namely, The German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig and the UFZ – Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Dept. Economics and Dept. Ecosystem Services).

Dr. Elisabeth Bakker

Dr. Elisabeth Bakker, senior scientist at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). Dr. Bakker is a wildlife and wetland ecologist, working on the impact of vertebrate herbivores on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and services. Bakker has long-standing experience performing experiments on the impact of large herbivores on grassland and wetland plant diversity, nutrient cycling and woody plant encroachment.

Furthermore, she studies how restoration of degraded ecosystems can be done through the process of rewilding. She leads a lab in which she at present supervises five PhD students, two postdocs and multiple master students.

Dr. Alfons van der Plas

Dr. Alfons van der Plas is a community and ecosystem ecologist, working on how land use and global change drivers are affecting the biodiversity, functioning and ecosystem services of natural systems.

Van der Plas has performed experiments and field observations on how large, wild grazer extinctions/reintroductions drive the vegetation structure and plant and insect diversity in natural systems (van der Plas & Olff 2014, van Klink et al. 2014, van der Plas et al. 2016).

His current work focuses on how livestock grazing, and other land-uses affect plant and animal diversity, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services in European grasslands. He developed frameworks to quantify the ability of landscapes with alternative land-uses to provide of multiple ecosystem services related to biodiversity, climate regulation and agricultural yields (Manning et al. 2018, van der Plas et al. in press).

Van der Plas has been working in the EU-funded project FunDivEUROPE, for which he led several subprojects including >40 authors assessing how biodiversity is related to various ecosystem functions and services.

Dr. Francisco Moreira

The team’s work will be supported by Dr. Francisco Moreira (CiBio/InBIO, Portugal).

CIBIO/InBIO is a Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Porto. Its mission is to develop world-class research in the areas of biodiversity and evolutionary biology. Jointly with the Center for Applied Ecology, Institute of Agronomy, Lisbon (CEABN/InBIO), they form the Research Network in Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology – InBIO. Francisco Moreira (https://cibio.up.pt/people/details/fmoreira) is responsible for one of the over 30 research groups in InBIO, namely the one on Biodiversity in Agricultural and Forest Ecosystems. He is also a member of the group on fire ecology.

He has a wide range of research interests including (i) the relationships between farming/livestock systems and biodiversity/ecosystem services and (ii) wildfire ecology (including landscape planning and post-fire restoration.

Moreira has been previously involved in LIFE Nature projects (as active member or scientific consultant), including coordination (LIFE92 NAT/P/013900 and LIFE95 NAT/P/000178).

He will contribute to the project by evaluating the biodiversity potential and wildfire hazard implications of different types of livestock systems. F. Moreira is a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Conservation Biology – Europe Section (SCB-ES). Moreira is member of the Policy Committee of SCB-ES.