Sandra Diaz

External Advisory Board Member

Dr. Sandra M. Diaz is a Professor of Ecology at Córdoba National University and a senior member of the National Research Council of Argentina. Among her many accomplishments, Sandra founded Núcleo DiverSus on Diversity and Sustainability; co-founded the Global Communal Plant Trait Initiative TRY; and co-chaired the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Sandra’s research interests are in plant functional traits and general patterns of functional specialization, their effects on ecosystem properties, and their interactions with global change drivers. 

Constructing the first global quantitative picture of essential functional diversity of vascular plants—the global spectrum of plant form and function—Sandra provided a backdrop for evolutionary, ecological, and biogeochemical modeling studies. This work included advancing theory and practical implementation of the concept of functional diversity and its effects on ecosystem properties and benefits. Sandra combines her plant ecology studies with interdisciplinary work on how different societies value and reconfigure biological communities and ecosystems. Sandra is a member of the Academies of Science of Argentina, USA, France, and the Developing World, and an Honorary Fellow of the British Ecological Society. Sandra’s awards include the Cozzarelli Prize (2008), the Margalef Prize in Ecology (2017), the Senckenberg Award for Nature Research (2019), and the Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science (2019). Sandra was a member of SESYNC’s External Advisory Committee. 

External Links:
https://nucleodiversus.org/?lang=en
https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/Home.php
https://ipbes.net/
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/29/11469/tab-figures-data
https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/people/sdiaz.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_D%C3%ADaz_(ecologist)
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fPHP7JwAAAAJ&hl=en
https://royalsociety.org/people/sandra-diaz-14086/

Image
Photo of Sandra Diaz
2016 - 2020
Areas of Expertise
community and ecosystem ecology
plant traits
functional biodiversity
ecosystem services
Research Interests
biodiversity and derived societal benefits
functional biodiversity
building ecological and social tools to analyze origin and maintenance of functional diversity, especially plants
Methods of Expertise
measuring ecosystem processes
identification of plant functional traits