M. Teresa Sebastià

Head of group

PROGRAM / Bioeconomy, health and governance

M.-Teresa Sebastià is Professor of Botany of the University of Lleida (UdL) since 1998. She has been a researcher at the Forest Sciences and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) since 1997, where she currently leads the group ECOFUN on Biodiversity, Functional Ecology and Global Change. She completed her PhD thesis at the University of Barcelona and a postdoc at Harvard University. She has developed research in grasslands, forests and croplands in three continents. Her research has shown (i) the importance of topographical factors in combination with soils for plant community distribution, highly relevant among others for remote sensing; (ii) the interactive effects of climate and management change variables on plant diversity and plant functional traits, showing divergent trait behavior according to stressors’ combinations; (iii) the importance of sown diversity on the delivery of ecosystem goods and services in recently assembled plant communities, suggesting rapid ecosystem organization; (iv) the role of climate, management and biodiversity on soil organic carbon storage, including the shifting role of legumes, and the capacity of sown diversity and management for agroecosystem mitigation and adaptation to climate change; (v) the role of biological interactions on ecosystem functioning in grasslands, including plant-soil biodiversity and the dynamics of fairy rings. She has also developed the TSIS climatic index, where TSIS = MST – MAT. She coordinates a network of infrastructures of eddy covariance flux towers in grasslands across climatic gradients in the Pyrenees. Furthermore, she has coordinated national and EU research projects and sited in several scientific Committees. Finally, she has developed an important mentoring and formation activity, both as a university professor, and as a mentor of young researchers at Master, PhD, and postdoc level. Throughout her career, Prof. Sebastià has been able to attract much funding, both from the private and public sectors, including open competitive calls as well as specific research and professional contracts.