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 School of Geography and the Environment

Rosa Maria Roman Cuesta

Rosa-Maria Roman Cuesta

Position:

ECI Associate Fellow

e:

Member:

ECI Ecosystems Research Theme

Profile

Dr Rosa María Román gained her PhD in forest science from CREAF-Autonomous University of Barcelona (2002), with a particular focus on forest fires in tropical ecosystems. She has a BSc in Environmental Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (1997), and has been working on fire impacts in tropical Mexico (Chiapas, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR-SCLC)) since 1998 on both EU and Mexican-government funded projects. Her research foci include the role of El Niño episodes on fire trends, and the effectiveness of protected land to deal with fire pressures. She is currently working with Dr Yadvinder Malhi on the understanding of tropical ecosystem responses to climate change, with a particular focus on neotropical forests.

Rosa María's research concentrates on the landscape level, and focuses on scaling up from field work to ecosystem responses through remote sensing and GIS. To this end she spent some time at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the JPL (NASA center) during 2000 in order to improve her techniques in both optical and radar remote sensing.

Research Interests

The major focus of my research is to understand how tropical ecosystems are suffering from increased fire impacts and to which extent these fire disturbances are responding to global atmospheric changes, to anthropogenic pressures, or to a combination of them both. Understanding the contribution of human versus climate drivers of fires in different tropical ecosystems will offer insights on the management of protected areas, it will help guiding policy making and development projects, and it will raise public awareness of the vulnerability of many tropical ecosystems to fire and climatic disturbances.

Teaching

Orchid invetory from the Oxford Expedition 2008

Recent Publications

  1. Aragao, L., Malhi, Y., Román-Cuesta, R.M, Saatchi, S., Anderson, L. and Y., Shimabukuro. 2007. Fingerprints of the 1997/1998 and 2005 droughts in Amazonian rainforests. Geophysical Research Letters vol. 34, L07701, doi:10.1029/2006GL028946, 2007
  2. Liverman, D., and R.M., Román-Cuesta. 2007. Human interactions with the earth system: People and pixels revisited. Earth Systems Processes and Landforms in press.
  3. Malhi, Y. and Román-Cuesta, R.M. Analysis of lacunarity and scales of spatial homogeneity in IKONOS satellite images of tropical forest canopies. Remote Sensing of Environment in press.
  4. Román-Cuesta, R.M., and J. Martínez-Vilalta. 2006. Effectiveness of protected areas in mitigating fire within their boundaries: case study of Chiapas, Mexico. Conservation Biology 20:1074-1086.
  5. Román-Cuesta, R.M., J. Retana, M. Gracia. 2005. A quantitative comparison of remote sensing methodologies for classifying burned areas with LISS-III imagery. International Journal of Remote Sensing 26:1979-2003.
  6. Román-Cuesta, R.M. 2005. Fire and the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Letter to the editor. Society for Conservation Biology Newsletter. Vol 12. Issue 2. pp:13.
  7. Román-Cuesta, R.M, Retana, J., and Gràcia, M. 2004. Fire trends in tropical Mexico: a case study of Chiapas. Journal of Forestry 102:26-32.
  8. Román-Cuesta, R.M., Gracia, M., and J. Retana. 2003: Environmental and human factors influencing fire trends in Enso and non-Enso years in tropical Mexico. Ecological Applications 13:1177–1192.
  9. Martínez, P., Velázquez, J., and R.M., Román-Cuesta. 2003. Fire management program for the Biosphere Reserve of El Ocote Chiapas, Mexico. 38pp. Available on line at the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) (in Spanish only). An Activity of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR)
  10. Román-Cuesta, R.M. 2000. Forest fire situation in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. FAO Pages 426-437. In P. Pugliese, Editors. Global Forest Fire Assessment 1990-2000. FRA 2000. FAO. Main report. Working paper 55. Forestry department.FAO.
  11. Román-Cuesta, R.M, Retana, J., and Gràcia, M. Spatial heterogeneity of fire severity under moderate meteorological conditions: the role of fuels. Submitted to Ecological Applications

Book chapters

  1. Román-Cuesta, R.M., Retana, J., and M. Gracia. 2007. Fire challenges to conserving tropical ecosystems: the case study of Chiapas. In 'Biodiversity loss and conservation in fragmented forest landscapes. Evidence from temperate and montane tropical forests in Latin America’. Adrian Newton (Ed). CABI publishing. Cambridge. UK. In press. Sotero et al. Incendios forestales y biodiversidad en Chiapas. In ‘Estado de la Biodiversidad en Chiapas’. Conabio. Mexico. In prep.
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