“It is urgent that we stop the loss of biodiversity if we don’t want to sink our current Noah’s Ark”

Awarded the 13th BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology, Sandra Lavorel analyzes how ecosystems respond to disturbances and how ecosystem services can be conserved in a changing world. Through her functional approach, she explains how climate, land use, and community structure influence the capacity of ecosystems to sustain life.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category has gone in this thirteenth edition to ecologists Sandra Díaz (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, and Argentine National Research Council, CONICET), Sandra Lavorel (Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine [LECA], Grenoble, France, and Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand) and Mark Westoby (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia), for “expanding the concept of biodiversity,” through “their pioneering work to discover, describe and coordinate the measurement of plant functional traits.”