Associate Professor David Moreno-Mateos

David got his PhD from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Alcala, both in Spain, with honours in 2008. He then got postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and the Centre National de la Recherché Scientific (CNRS) in France. He has been awarded an Ikerbasque fellowship from the Basque Country government and a Ramon y Cajal fellowship from the Government of Spain to join the Basque Center for Climate Change – BC3, where he is now a Research Professor (part time). David has authored >50 papers in scientific journals and books, including papers in Nature Communications, Nature, PLoS Biology, or Nature Ecology and Evolution.

David studies patterns and mechanisms that shape the recovery of ecosystems after anthropogenic disturbance over long periods of time (centuries to millennia). We aim to detect global recovery patterns and mechanisms that could help us improve current efforts and strategies aiming to restore degraded ecosystems and conserve “undisturbed” ones. We combine observations and experimental research with analytical reviews in ecosystems in all impacted biomes, from the arctic to the tropics.

Meng Y, Gou R, Bai J, Moreno-Mateos D, Davis C, Wan L, Song S, Zhang H, Zhu X, Lin G. 2022. Spatial patterns and driving factors of carbon stocks in mangrove forests on Hainan Island, China. Global Ecology and Biogeography 31:1692-1706.

Moreno-Mateos D, Alberdi A, Mörrien E, Van der Putten W, Rodríguez-Uña A, Montoya D. 2020. The long-term restoration of ecosystem complexity. Nature Ecology and Evolution. 4:676-685.

Moreno-Mateos D, Barbier EB, Jones PC, Jones HP, Aronson J, Lopez-Lopez JA, McKrackin ML, Meli P, Montoya D, and Rey Benayas JM. 2017. Anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and the recovery debt. Nature Communications 8:14163.

Moreno-Mateos D, Maris V, Bechet A, and Curran M. 2015. The true loss caused by biodiversity offsets. Biological Conservation 192:552-559.

Murcia C, Aronson J, Kattan G, Moreno-Mateos D, Dixon K, Simberloff D. 2014. A ’critique’ to the novel ecosystems concept. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 29:548-553.

Moreno-Mateos D, Power ME, Comin FA, and Yockteng R. 2012. Structural and functional loss in restored wetland ecosystems. PLOS Biology (10)1:e1001247.