An international audition launched in June selected a Spanish post-doctoral student to work in the IFFSC with forest cover monitoring through remote sensing techniques. The student, Eva Sevillano Marco, is at Blumenau since October 2016. In the photo, Eva is with Adilson Luiz Nicoletti, who has a postgraduate scholarship granted by the program.

Eva was selected among 17 candidates. An international audition was the most appropriated way to select people because, according to Professor Alexander Vibrans, there are not so many candidates in Brazil with the right expertise for the project. Eva's post-doctoral fellowship will last until September 2019.

The project is focused on monitoring forest cover using remote sensing, as said Eva: "Our goal is to collect data and analyze the native forests of Santa Catarina".

She has the required knowledge to contribute to the project. She has experience in forest inventory, forest cover mapping, forest growth and production models, parametric ecological models, among other fields.

Her adaptation 

Eva have never been to Brazil. She was interviewed via Skype, although she did not have much time to prepare. Eva needed the help of her colleagues to carry out some bureaucratic issues in Brazil. Today, after months living in Blumenau, she is still dealing with some challenges, such as moving around the city and adapting to different Brazilian costumes like the meal eaten at noon.

Indeed, the foreign language was also a difficulty. Once she arrived at Blumenau, she spoke English. Now, she knows how to speak Portuguese quite well. The Portuguese classes offered to foreigners by FURB Idiomas were certainly helpful.

The search

She was in the field twice and noticed the differences between the Brazilian forests and those of Spain. "Everything is different. Here the forests are denser. In Spain, there are not so many native forests, and species diversity is not as great as here. In Spain, the GPS system works well when we are inside forest stands, but here it does not work so well. I am discovering a new world", she stated.

According to Eva, the forest cover monitoring will enable comparisons of forest cover dynamics since the 1970s. "Based on this mapping, it is possible to implement biodiversity conservation actions in various areas", she said. 

The FURB Herbarium along with the Forest and Floristic Inventory of Santa Catarina (IFFSC) is becoming a reference to botanic studies in the state and Brazil. The recent discovery made by Dr. Edlley M. Pessoa is a proof to this. In his PhD studies, he realized that an orchid archived in the FURB Herbarium was indeed a new species.

Dr. Edlley M. Pessoa named the species Campylocentrum schlechterianum. The species is described in the Phytotaxa international journal (Read the full text). The species' name is a tribute to Rudolf Schlechter, a German botanist who described several species of the genus Campylocentrum in the early 20th century.

The plant was collected by Juliane Schmitt and colleagues, and was deposited at the FURB Herbarium; it can be accessed at http://furb.jbrj.gov.br/v2/consulta.php. The plant was collect on January 26 (2010) in the municipality of São Martinho, at an altitude of 526 m above sea level.

During the year of 2010, the IFFSC studied the state's epiphytes and collected numerous samples. Another species (Vriesea rubens) was described based on a collection made in the city of Orleans (SC). The results from this survey were published in "A Guide for Santa Catarina's epiphytes"  (Volume 6 of the IFFSC's books).

"This finding shows that even in Santa Catarina, where several botanical studies have been made, new species are still being discovered; it indicates that continuous plant collections are necessary. It also shows the importance of the FURB Herbarium in storing Santa Catarina's plant biodiversity and the IFFSC as a promoter of biodiversity studies", commented Professor Dr. André Luis de Gasper, curator of the FURB Herbarium.

The Forest and Floristic Inventory of Santa Catarina (IFFSC) team (Universidade Regional de Blumenau, FURB) integrates a research group composed by 90 institutions around the world, coordinated by Jingjing Liang (West Virginia University), Peter B. Reich (University of Minnesota), and Thomas W. Crowther (Yale University); the group has been analyzing forest data from more than 700,000 permanent sample plots measured over the past 20 years in 44 countries. The research is entitled "The positive relationship between biodiversity and productivity of forests - a global study" ( http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6309/aaf8957.full ).

As said Professor Alexander Vibrans, the coordinator of the IFFSC and co-author of the paper published in Science, "the 1,074 sample plots distributed throughout the state constitute the largest forest database within South America; it certainly contributed to the modeling of the relationship between biodiversity and forest productivity in our continent". For Professor Vibrans, the inclusion of the IFFSC's data in the study is an acknowledgment of the uniqueness and quality of the surveys conducted in the state since 2007. The IFFSC had also participated in a paper published in the journal Nature in 2015 (https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7568/full/nature14967.html).

The research group found a positive and globally consistent relationship between species diversity and productivity of forests (trees growth). The study revealed that the greater is the number of tree species, the greater is the biomass productivity and carbon sequestration. On the other hand, it was shown that biodiversity loss (caused by deforestation, degradation or climate changes) drives a significant decrease in forest productivity. The relationship has been illustrated by theoretical models for a long time, although it had not yet been tested in a large-scale global study.

What are forests with great diversity? Forests composed by a lot of different tree species, such as tropical forests.

The results are impactful for both science and society; to science because they contribute to understanding the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems; to society because they show that biodiversity conservation is not an end in itself, rather an economic necessity: forests with great diversity produce more wood and biomass and therefore capture more carbon (i.e., it is relevant to reverse the greenhouse effect); forests also provide other environmental services, such as rainwater retention and release to reservoirs, soil protection, climate regulation at local-, regional-, and global-levels, and storage of genetic resources of flora and fauna.

The research team estimated the monetary value of forest biodiversity in maintaining 'marketable' forest productivity in about $490 billion per year; the value is more than double than the estimated cost to conserve all terrestrial ecosystems. This means that the economic benefits of biodiversity protection are much greater than the cost to protect it.

This finding highlights the need for reassessing monetary values ​​assigned to biodiversity, as well as the urge to develop forest management and conservation strategies. The diminishing of forest diversity also threatens people living in rural areas that depend on forest resources: forest productivity loss results in income loss for these populations. Therefore, we should take measures to improve the protection and management of forests to address the vanishing of biodiversity.

Access the explanatory video.

The research, published on October 14 of 2016 in the Science journal, marks the first major achievement of the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFBI) team, which the IFFSC is part of. Founded in 2016, the GFBI is an international interdisciplinary multi-institutional research group that aims to improve the understanding of patterns and processes that act on four billion hectares of forests in the planet.

To learn more about it, please visit:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6309/aaf8957.full

https://youtu.be/c80oLYvr9ck

http://www.GFBinitiative.org/

Three researchers of the Universidade Regional de Blumenau (FURB) were invited to present the results of studies conducted by the Forest and Floristic Inventory of Santa Catarina (IFFSC) in the IV National Forest Inventory Symposium, organized by the Brazilian Forest Service ( http://eventos.florestal.gov.br/simposioif/ ).

Professor Dr. André Luis de Gasper presented the lecture entitled 'Study of attributes related to biodiversity in the NFI in Santa Catarina (IFFSC)'; the lecture addressed the species diversity found by the IFFSC. He also presented recently published papers, which focused on the performance of species richness estimators and species modeling.

MSc. Laio Zimermann Oliveira lectured about 'The use of data from the NFI-Brazil in forest dynamics analyses'. He commented that the IFFSC's 2nd measurement cycle brings up new challenges, both in field work and data analysis; based on data from 136 remeasured plots, the IFFSC has been developing methods to quantify changes in vegetation over time, such as tree growth and mortality.

MSc. Débora Vanessa Lingner presented the lecture entitled 'Allometry of tree species in the Evergreen Rainforest'. She presented a study that is being carried out in an area which is under a partial forest management system in the municipality of Guaramirim (SC). The objective of the study is to develop volume and biomass models for tree species occurring in the Evergreen Rainforest of Santa Catarina.

Finally, Dr. Lucia Sevegnani (in memorian) was honored by the Brazilian Forest Service for her efforts in promoting ecological education and biodiversity conservation.