CONFERENCE LOUIS THALER - Ecosystem services for global change adaptation

Sandra LAVOREL
Laboratoire d’écologie alpine, Grenoble sandra.lavorel@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

The Louis Thaler Lectures are an annual event organized by the CeMEB, featuring high-profile and thought-provoking international researchers with broad views in these research fields. They were launched in 2003 in honour of Louis Thaler, who was one of the main architects of evolutionary biology in France, and the founder of the ISEM (Institut de Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier). In 2018, we have the pleasure to welcome Sandra Lavorel.

Sandra Lavorel is a landscape and ecosystem ecologist, working on the interrelations between climate, landuse, biodiversity and ecosystem services. First trained as an agronomist, Sandra pioneered the development of trait-based approaches in functional ecology, opening new perspectives for the development of models on the responses of biodiversity and ecosystem services to global change. Now a CNRS Senior Researcher, she is based at the Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine in Grenoble, where she leads a team on the dynamics of alpine socio-ecosystems. Sandra’s research has proven key to the development of biodiversity scenarios and quantification of ecosystem services directly applicable to informing local to global policy and decision-making. She has been involved in major international biodiversity programmes and assessments including the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Global Land Project of IGBP/IHDP, project BioDISCOVERY of Diversitas and the ongoing Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). She is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of ecoSERVICES (FutureEarth) and junior member of the French Academy of Sciences. The merits of her work have been recognised through multiple prizes, including the Silver Medal of CNRS (2013), the Alexandre van Humboldt medal of the International Association of Vegetation Science (2015) and the Marsh Award of the British Ecological Society (2017).