Janet Dwyer, Chris Short and Katarina Kubinokova are all attending a PEGASUS project meeting in Evora, Portugal, this week.
The meeting is timed to showcase the first year’s work and to provide a platform and training for the second year of the project.
The first year has seen the establishment of an agreed conceptual framework and an assessment of the various databases that will be used during the second and third years. On Tuesday, Janet will be presenting the synthesis report on the conceptual framework to the Project Advisory Group, including members from the European Commission, who are also attending the meeting.
On Wednesday the whole team will visit The Montado, a Mediterranean silvo-pastoral land-use system dominated by Holm Oaks (Quercus ilex) and Cork Oaks (Quercus suber). This traditional landscape is recognised as delivering a wide variety of ecosystem services and public goods due to the multi-functional land-use systems and rich ecosystems. Current initiatives are seeking to enhance the resilience and sustainability of the area to benefit nature sand the whole region.
The final two days of the meeting are set aside for training and Katarina and Chris will be leading this, together with colleagues from IFLS in Germany.
The second year of PEGASUS is set aside for case studies, with 32 being undertaken in 10 member states, including 4 in England.
The meeting is taking place at the University of Evora, which dates back to the sixteenth century, although it was closed for 200 years before reopening in 1973 as a public university.
