Marie Curie Fellow (European Commission, International Outgoing Fellowships for Career Development).
Pilar moved Barcelona to Colorado in October 2013 to investigate the response of soil food web stability to land-use changes under different climate scenarios. She is now concentrated on effects of big and small grazers on the Shortgrass Steppe soils and, particularly, on environmental services provided by soil biodiversity. She is using two complementary approaches: field and experimental work and modeling.
She is a senior researcher who got her PhD from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) in 1990, with a dissertation on effects of soil microatrhopods on forest litter decomposition in Mediterranean forests. Since then, she combines basic research on soil biodiversity and soil biodiversity functions with applied research on land restoration and integrated land-use planning.
Pilar is especially interested in generating useful data to support decision-making for soil biodiversity and biodiversity function preservation. In this respect, she has been leading interdisciplinary teams working on integrated developing dry-tropical regions.