Josep Penuelas

Josep Penuelas or Josep Peñuelas i Reixach is a research professor of the National Research Council of Spain (CSIC). Director of the CREAF-CSIC Global Ecology Unit located at CREAF -Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is an ecologist working on global ecology, plant ecophysiology, chemical ecology, remote sensing, geosciences and atmosphere-biosphere interactions.

Josep Peñuelas

Issues of study

Prof. Peñuelas is one of the most respected and influential ecologists working today; no one working in global ecology can afford not to engage with his work. Professor Josep Penuelas is internationally recognized for his pioneering work on the discovery of ecophysiological mechanisms linked to the carbon and oxygen use that help to explain the diversity and distribution of aquatic and terrestrial plants; the development of increasingly used remote sensing techniques to assess plant and ecosystem functioning (e.g. he codeveloped the PRI, photochemical reflectance index, and developed the WBI, water band index, that are becoming established tools in remote sensing); the discovery of current evidences of global change, climate change, and air pollution effects on biodiversity and structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems; the introduction of metabolomics in ecology, the study of the mechanisms and the function and effects of volatile organic compounds emissions by plants and ecosystems, the disentangling of biogeochemical processes involved in the carbon and nutrient cycles, or the development of science and policy for a sustainable planet, among many others. This work led to a critical understanding of how environment and ecology are centrally important in managing the global environmental crisis. He has coordinated groups of international scientists in the production of a series of influential papers on Ecology, Earth sciences, and the influences that human activities have on the biosphere. He also has an international reputation in other, diverse fields, such as molecular Ecology, theoretical Ecology, agriculture, food security, global human health, or the role of humans in precipitating global change and existential crisis during the Anthropocene. This expertise is reflected in the number of Keynote and Plenary invitations and the Prizes and Awards he receives every year.

He is highly cited Highly Cited Researchers scientist in ecology/environment, in plant and animal sciences, agricultural sciences, geosciences and in all science fields of the ISI essential science indicators (Thomson Reuters).

His recent subjects of study are global change, climate change, atmospheric pollution, biogenic volatile organic compounds emissions, remote sensing, plant ecophysiology, and functioning and structure of terrestrial plants and ecosystems.

He has been principal investigator or scientific coordinator of several European Union, Spanish and Catalan projects financed by public research agencies and by private funding. Among them he has been awarded with ERC-Synergy 2014–2019 grant for the IMBALANCE-P project .

He has published 6 books on ecology, more than 1000 papers in scientific journals and books (more than 800 in journals of the Science Citation Index, including Nature, Science and PNAS), 300 in other jornals and chapters of bookcs, and more than 250 articles on popular science in Catalan and Spanish newspapers. It is also outstanding his labour popularizing science issues at international and national scale.

He is currently member of the editorial board of Ecology Letters , Global Change Biology , Global Ecology and Biogeography , New Phytologist, Remote Sensing of the Environment, Atmospheric Pollution Research, e-Forestry, Journal of Plant Ecology, Journal of Botany and Plant Ecology and Diversity and Trees. He collaborates in the reviewing of articles in many scientific journals, such as Science, Nature, Nature Geoscience, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and Trends in Plant Science. He also evaluates scientific projects for several international and national programmes. He is a member of several academies and international and national scientific associations.

National and International recognition

He has received several awards-prizes both national and international (Conde de Barcelona 1990; NASA 1993; Science Ministry of Japan 1998;Medi Ambient Institut d'Estudis Catalans-Caixa Sabadell 2008; I Premi Nacional de Recerca de Catalunya 2010; Silver badge of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (October 27, 2014); Premio Rey Jaime I 2015; Doctor Honoris causa by the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia, 2016; Adoptive son of Figueres, 2016; Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology (Premi Ramon Margalef d'Ecologia) 2016; Chair of the panel of judges for the Nature’s awards for scientific mentoring 2017; Special mention at the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2017 in the class of Earth and environmental sciences; Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative（PIFI）to Distinguished Scientist 2018, Marsh Award for Climate Change Research Prize of the British Ecological Society 2018, Prize Ciutat de Barcelona in Earth and Environmental sciences 2018, Nominated among the four hundred most influential scientists in all fields and among the ten most influential scientists in ecological and environmental sciences (Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford – METRICS) 2019, Elected American Geophysical Union 2020 Fellow for his exceptional contributions in the Earth and space sciences…). He was the president of Institució Catalana d'Història Natural and adviser of CADS (Consell Assessor per al Desenvolupament Sostenible), Generalitat of Catalonia.

In 2016 he was awarded the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology (Premi Ramon Margalef d'Ecologia) as one of the most cited researchers in the fields of ecology and the environment.[1]

References
  1. "Premi Ramon Margalef d'Ecologia 2016". Generalitat de Catalunya. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
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