Sandra Díaz (ecologist)

Sandra Myrna Díaz ForMemRS is an Argentine ecologist and professor of ecology at the National University of Córdoba.[2] She studies the functional traits of plants and investigates how plants impact the ecosystem.[3]

For other people named Sandra Diaz, see Sandra Diaz (disambiguation).

Sandra Díaz
Born
Sandra Myrna Díaz
NationalityArgentinian
Alma materNational University of Córdoba
Known forPlant biodiversity
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsCommunity ecology
Plant functional traits
Functional diversity
Global environmental change
Social benefits of biodiversity[1]
InstitutionsInstituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal, CONICET & National University of Córdoba
University of Sheffield
Websitewww.nucleodiversus.org/index.php?mod=page&id=39&lang=en

Díaz is a senior member of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina. She is one of the 1% most cited scientists in the world.[4][1] She was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2019[5] and an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022.[6]

Early life and education

Díaz was born in Bell Ville in the province of Córdoba, Argentina.[7] Her parents loved plants and she grew up in a home with big gardens.[8]

Díaz attended the National University of Córdoba and graduated cum laude with a biology degree in 1984.[8] She decided that she wanted to be an environmental scientist, and chose to pursue graduate research. She remained at National University of Córdoba for her doctoral , earning a PhD in biological sciences in 1989.[9] She worked with Marcelo Cabido and Alicia Acosta on plant functional traits.[8] During her PhD and later research Díaz developed the protocols to support scientists using functional traits to interpret ecosystems.[8] Díaz was a fellow at CONICET, the center for ecology and natural resources.

Career and research

After reading a book by J. Philip Grime about the connection between plant strategies, ecosystem processes and environmental factors, Díaz applied to work with him in the United Kingdom.[8] In 1991 Díaz joined the University of Sheffield as a postdoctoral research associate.[8]

At Sheffield she studied how plant communities respond to increasing quantities of carbon dioxide (CO₂). She was the first to demonstrate an important feedback between plants and soil microbes under elevated carbon dioxide. She found that, even in the presence of fertilizer, weedy plants that grow quickly suffer from heightened levels of carbon dioxide.[8] At the same time, microorganisms in the soil thrived in high levels of carbon dioxide indicating that there is a competition between plants and soil for nitrogen.[10] Diaz also showed that slow-growing plants have a more positive feedback mechanism.[11]

Díaz returned to Argentina in 1993, where she moved back into studying plant traits.[11] She was a principal lead author to the chapter on "Rangelands in a Changing Climate: Impacts, Adaptations, and Mitigation" in the 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).[12] Díaz founded the Núcleo DiverSus de Investigaciones en Diversidad y Sustentatibilidad.[13]

She has played an important role in the development and implementation of functional biodiversity.[13] As part of CONICET Díaz developed a new methodology to quantify the functional biodiversity of plants.[14] This tool allows scientists to evaluate the effect of biodiversity of plants and its impact on ecosystems. Díaz was the first to provide a global picture of the functional diversity of vascular plants. She designed a database of tens of thousands of plants, using contributions of 135 scientists.[8][15]

She explored functional trait diversity on plots of land, dividing vegetation into separate sections to simulate changes in climate and land use.[8][16] She demonstrated that there exists a tradeoff in plant design between the fast acquisition of resources and the conservation of the resources in tissues.[17] Plant designs can include the lifetime of their leaves, whether they grow quickly or slowly, how they reproduce and what kind of wood they have.[8] In 2016, se presented the global spectrum of plant form and function, the first global picture plant essential functional diversity.[18]

Díaz is also interested in the interaction between ecology and the social sciences, and looks at how societies value and support ecosystems[8] and in the relationship between living plants and people. She published a mechanistic framework for connecting functional diversity in 2007, a paper which would go on to win the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) Cozzarelli Prize.[19][20] She used this methodology in real-world systems, and assembled a team of social scientists and ecologists.[8] Social scientists worked with communities to understand what they want from a particular ecosystem, and ecologists studied functional diversity and the relevant ecosystem processes.[8] She has spearheaded the inclusive concept of nature’s contributions to people now used by Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity.[21]

Clarivate Analytics reported that Díaz was one of the most highly cited environmental scientists in the world.[4] She has been a Co-Chair of the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).[22][23] [24] [25][26] The IPBES Global Assessment was carried out by more than 150 scientists worldwide.

Other activities

In 2023, Díaz was appointed by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres to the United Nations' Scientific Advisory Board.[27]

Recognition

Díaz was listed as one of the ten people who mattered in science in 2019 by the journal Nature in their end of year review [28] In 2023 she was one of the six women chosen by Nature to comment on their plans for International Women's Day. The others were Gihan Kamel, Martina Anto-Ocrah, Jess Wade, Aster Gebrekirstos and Tanya Monro.[29]

Awards and honours

Díaz' awards and honours include:

Sandra Díaz receiving the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Medal from the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon on 13 March 2023

References
  1. Sandra Díaz publications indexed by Google Scholar
  2. "Sandra Diaz". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  3. Chapin III, F. Stuart; Zavaleta, Erika S.; Eviner, Valerie T.; Naylor, Rosamond L.; Vitousek, Peter M.; Reynolds, Heather L.; Hooper, David U.; Lavorel, Sandra; Sala, Osvaldo E.; Hobbie, Sarah E.; Mack, Michelle C.; Díaz, Sandra (2000). "Consequences of changing biodiversity". Nature. 405 (6783): 234–242. doi:10.1038/35012241. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 10821284. S2CID 205006508. closed access
  4. "La cordobesa Sandra Díaz, una de las mentes más influyentes del mundo". Cba24n (in European Spanish). 28 December 2018. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  5. Anon (2019). "Sandra Diaz". royalsociety.org. Royal Society. Retrieved 20 April 2019. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)
  6. The American Philosophical Society Welcomes New Members for 2022
  7. "LAVOZ.com.ar | Sandra Díaz". Archivo.lavoz.com.ar. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  8. Trivedi, Bijal P. (2012). "Profile of Sandra M. Díaz". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (29): 11469–11471. Bibcode:2012PNAS..10911469T. doi:10.1073/pnas.1210043109. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3406846. PMID 22761316.
  9. "Professor Sandra Díaz". Iinteracademies.org. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  10. Díaz, S.; Grime, J. P.; Harris, J.; McPherson, E. (1993). "Evidence of a feedback mechanism limiting plant response to elevated carbon dioxide". Nature. 364 (6438): 616–617. Bibcode:1993Natur.364..616D. doi:10.1038/364616a0. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 4272738. closed access
  11. Diaz, Sandra; Cabido, Marcelo (1997). "Plant functional types and ecosystem function in relation to global change". Journal of Vegetation Science. 8 (3): 463–474. doi:10.1111/j.1654-1103.1997.tb00842.x. ISSN 1100-9233. JSTOR 3237198.
  12. "Chapter 2: Rangelands in a Changing Climate: Impacts, Adaptations, and Mitigation - AR2 WG2" (PDF). archive.ipcc.ch. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
  13. "Sandra M. Díaz | DiverSus group". Nucleodiversus.org. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  14. Díaz, Sandra; Quétier, Fabien; Cáceres, Daniel M.; Trainor, Sarah F.; Pérez-Harguindeguy, Natalia; Bret-Harte, M. Syndonia; Finegan, Bryan; Peña-Claros, Marielos; Poorter, Lourens (2011). "Linking functional diversity and social actor strategies in a framework for interdisciplinary analysis of nature's benefits to society". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108 (3): 895–902. doi:10.1073/pnas.1017993108. OCLC 720176072. PMC 3024663. PMID 21220325.
  15. Kattge, J.; Diaz, S.; Lavorel, S.; Prentice, I.C.; Leadley, P.; Bönisch, G.; Garnier, E.; Westobys, M.; Reich, P.B.; Wrights, I.J.; Cornelissen, C.; Violle, C.; Harisson, S.P.; et al. (2011). "TRY - a global database of plant traits". Global Change Biology. 17 (9): 2905–2935. Bibcode:2011GCBio..17.2905K. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02451.x. OCLC 1018986898. PMC 3627314.
  16. Díaz, Sandra; Symstad, Amy J.; Stuart Chapin, F.; Wardle, David A.; Huenneke, Laura F. (2003). "Functional diversity revealed by removal experiments". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 18 (3): 140–146. doi:10.1016/s0169-5347(03)00007-7. ISSN 0169-5347. closed access
  17. Diaz, S.; Hodgson, J. G.; Thompson, K.; Cabido, M.; Cornelissen, J. H. C.; Jalili, A.; Montserrat‐Martí, G.; Grime, J. P.; Zarrinkamar, F. (2004). "The plant traits that drive ecosystems: Evidence from three continents" (PDF). Journal of Vegetation Science. 15 (3): 295–304. doi:10.1111/j.1654-1103.2004.tb02266.x. ISSN 1654-1103. closed access
  18. Díaz, Sandra; Kattge, Jens; Cornelissen, Johannes H. C.; Wright, Ian J.; Lavorel, Sandra; Dray, Stéphane; Reu, Björn; Kleyer, Michael; Wirth, Christian; Colin Prentice, I.; Garnier, Eric; Bönisch, Gerhard; Westoby, Mark; Poorter, Hendrik; Reich, Peter B. (January 2016). "The global spectrum of plant form and function". Nature. 529 (7585): 167–171. doi:10.1038/nature16489. hdl:11299/184528. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 26700811. S2CID 254590851.
  19. Díaz, Sandra; Lavorel, Sandra; de Bello, Francesco; Quétier, Fabien; Grigulis, Karl; Robson, T. Matthew (26 December 2007). "Incorporating plant functional diversity effects in ecosystem service assessments". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (52): 20684–20689. doi:10.1073/pnas.0704716104. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2410063. PMID 18093933.
  20. "Cozzarelli Prize". pnas.org. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  21. Díaz, Sandra; Pascual, Unai; Stenseke, Marie; Martín-López, Berta; Watson, Robert T.; Molnár, Zsolt; Hill, Rosemary; Chan, Kai M. A.; Baste, Ivar A.; Brauman, Kate A.; Polasky, Stephen; Church, Andrew; Lonsdale, Mark; Larigauderie, Anne; Leadley, Paul W. (19 January 2018). "Assessing nature's contributions to people". Science. 359 (6373): 270–272. Bibcode:2018Sci...359..270D. doi:10.1126/science.aap8826. hdl:10810/44029. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 29348221. S2CID 13689076.
  22. Masood, Ehsan (22 August 2018). "The battle for the soul of biodiversity". Nature. 560 (7719): 423–425. Bibcode:2018Natur.560..423M. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-05984-3. PMID 30135536.
  23. Díaz, Sandra; Demissew, Sebsebe; Carabias, Julia; Joly, Carlos; Lonsdale, Mark; Ash, Neville; Larigauderie, Anne; Adhikari, Jay Ram; Arico, Salvatore; Báldi, András; Bartuska, Ann; Baste, Ivar Andreas; Bilgin, Adem; Brondizio, Eduardo; Chan, Kai MA; Figueroa, Viviana Elsa; Duraiappah, Anantha; Fischer, Markus; Hill, Rosemary; Koetz, Thomas; Leadley, Paul; Lyver, Philip; Mace, Georgina M; Martin-Lopez, Berta; Okumura, Michiko; Pacheco, Diego; Pascual, Unai; Pérez, Edgar Selvin; Reyers, Belinda; Roth, Eva; Saito, Osamu; Scholes, Robert John; Sharma, Nalini; Tallis, Heather; Thaman, Randolph; Watson, Robert; Yahara, Tetsukazu; Hamid, Zakri Abdul; Akosim, Callistus; Al-Hafedh, Yousef; Allahverdiyev, Rashad; Amankwah, Edward; Asah, Stanley T; Asfaw, Zemede; Bartus, Gabor; Brooks, L Anathea; Caillaux, Jorge; Dalle, Gemedo; Darnaedi, Dedy; Driver, Amanda; Erpul, Gunay; Escobar-Eyzaguirre, Pablo; Failler, Pierre; Fouda, Ali Moustafa Mokhtar; Fu, Bojie; Gundimeda, Haripriya; Hashimoto, Shizuka; Homer, Floyd; Lavorel, Sandra; Lichtenstein, Gabriela; Mala, William Armand; Mandivenyi, Wadzanayi; Matczak, Piotr; Mbizvo, Carmel; Mehrdadi, Mehrasa; Metzger, Jean Paul; Mikissa, Jean Bruno; Moller, Henrik; Mooney, Harold A; Mumby, Peter; Nagendra, Harini; Nesshover, Carsten; Oteng-Yeboah, Alfred Apau; Pataki, György; Roué, Marie; Rubis, Jennifer; Schultz, Maria; Smith, Peggy; Sumaila, Rashid; Takeuchi, Kazuhiko; Thomas, Spencer; Verma, Madhu; Yeo-Chang, Youn; Zlatanova, Diana (June 2015). "The IPBES Conceptual Framework — connecting nature and people". Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. 14: 1–16. Bibcode:2015COES...14....1D. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2014.11.002.
  24. Díaz, Sandra; Pascual, Unai; Stenseke, Marie; Martín-López, Berta; Watson, Robert T.; Molnár, Zsolt; Hill, Rosemary; Chan, Kai M. A.; Baste, Ivar A.; Brauman, Kate A.; Polasky, Stephen; Church, Andrew; Lonsdale, Mark; Larigauderie, Anne; Leadley, Paul W.; van Oudenhoven, Alexander P. E.; van der Plaat, Felice; Schröter, Matthias; Lavorel, Sandra; Aumeeruddy-Thomas, Yildiz; Bukvareva, Elena; Davies, Kirsten; Demissew, Sebsebe; Erpul, Gunay; Failler, Pierre; Guerra, Carlos A.; Hewitt, Chad L.; Keune, Hans; Lindley, Sarah; Shirayama, Yoshihisa (18 January 2018). "Assessing nature's contributions to people". Science. 359 (6373): 270–272. Bibcode:2018Sci...359..270D. doi:10.1126/science.aap8826. hdl:10289/12219. PMID 29348221. S2CID 13689076.
  25. "Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) - Article by IPBES Experts in Science | IPBES". Ipbes.net. October 2018. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  26. "Sandra Díaz | Global Land Programme". Glp.earth. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  27. UN Secretary-General Creates Scientific Advisory Board for Independent Advice on Breakthroughs in Science and Technology United Nations, press release of 3 August 2023.
  28. "Nature's 10". Nature. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  29. "Celebrate women in science — today, and every day". Nature. 615 (7951): 187. 8 March 2023. Bibcode:2023Natur.615..187.. doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00670-5. PMID 36890375. S2CID 257380632.
  30. "Sustainability Science Awards – The Ecological Society of America's History and Records". Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  31. "Sandra M. Diaz". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
  32. "CISEN4". Geap.com.ar. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  33. "Galería de Fotos Premios Konex 2013 - Acto Culminatorio: Ciencia y Tecnología : KONEX DE PLATINO - BIOLOGÍA Y ECOLOGÍA - SANDRA DÍAZ". Fundacion Konex. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  34. "Prof. Sandra Díaz received the "Bernardo Houssay Career Award"". DiverSus. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  35. "Científicos del CONICET galardonados en los Premios Houssay". Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  36. "Honorary membership". British Ecological Society. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  37. "Dr. Sandra Díaz, Co-Chair of IPBES Global Assessment awarded 2017 Premi Ramon Margalef d'Ecologia | IPBES". Ipbes.net. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  38. Gibney, Elizabeth; Callaway, Ewen; Cyranoski, David; Gaind, Nisha; Tollefson, Jeff; Courtland, Rachel; Law, Yao-Hua; Maher, Brendan; Else, Holly; Castelvecchi, Davide (2018). "Ten people who mattered this year". Nature. 564 (7736): 325–335. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-07683-5. PMID 30563976.
  39. "Joanne Chory and Sandra Myrna Díaz Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research". FUNDACIÓN Princesa de Asturias. 5 June 2019. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  40. "Gunnerus Award goes to expert on biodiversity". EurekAlert.org. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  41. BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards 2020
  42. "The Kew International Medal: Everything you need to know | Kew". www.kew.org. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  43. "Ya se conocen los Konex de Platino y Konex de Brillante | Fundación Konex". www.fundacionkonex.org (in Spanish). Retrieved 3 October 2023.
  44. "Sandra Díaz y Gabriel Rabinovich fueron distinguidos con el Premio Konex de Brillante por su rol destacado en Ciencia y Tecnología". infobae (in European Spanish). 29 September 2023. Retrieved 3 October 2023.
  45. "The Linnean Medal". The Linnean Society. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
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