Clima, uso del territorio y costra biológica del suelo: Argentina como modelo

Dr Sergio Velasco Ayuso

Laboratorio de interacciones entre Clima, Ecosistemas y Biodiversidad (iCEB)

Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA)

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICET)

Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)

Argentina

Short bio

I graduated in Biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain). After completing a Master in Ecology and Environmental Sciences at the same university, I obtained a PhD in Biological Sciences with a thesis focused on the microbial communities of groundwaters. After having been working for a few years as a researcher in a Spanish Government Agency, I got a technician position at the University of Granada (Spain), where I studied the effects of various global change-related stressors on microbial trophic networks in Mediterranean, high-mountain lakes. Then, I obtained a postdoctoral position at Arizona State University (USA), where I was working in a project whose main goal was to facilitate the recovery of degraded dryland soils by restoring biocrust communities. A few years later, I accepted a lecturing and postdoctoral position at The University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) to start an investigation on the effects of nutrient inputs, precipitation patterns and grazing on soil microbial communities in grasslands and rangelands. Currently, I am an Assistant Scientific Researcher at the National Research and Technology Council of Argentina. I am working in a project that aims building models to describe biogeographical patterns of heterotrophic bacteria in global oceans. I am also involved in an international project to understand the structure and functioning of biocrusts under current and future climatic and land use conditions in Argentina. I am also working in a project that will assess the role of groundwater microbial communities in the biogeochemical transformations of As. Finally, I teach Biometry for undergraduate students as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of The University of Buenos Aires.