By Maria Carla Lostrangio, Project Manager at Euromontana, and Marie Clotteau, Director at Euromontana.
Mountain grasslands: an endangered habitat
Grasslands cover 15.9% of the area of the EU-28 and are the third most widespread habitat (EC, 2016) with invaluable contribution for public goods and ecosystem services (Plantureux et al., 2016). Yet, today more than 75% of the grassland area in the EU-28 is considered to have an unfavourable conservation status (EEA, 2020). (more…)
Andreja Borec, University of Maribor, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Slovenia.
Slovenia is a mountainous country with 72,3% of its territory defined as LFA (Areas of Less Favourable Farming). Most of northern part is dominated by the Alps, that reach their southeastern limit of distribution in Slovenia by forested plateau of Pohorje. (more…)
By Audrey Vincent, geographer, lecturer-researcher at ISARA.
ISARA is an engineering school specialised in agriculture, food science and environment. We offer a wide range of Bachelor and Master level curricula in these fields. Next to teaching, we also have research activities as well as advisory and consultancy services. Every year, we offer in June a module dedicated to mountains, their specificities and their challenges. It is taught in English and can be followed by ISARA students as well as by students coming from our partner universities.
By Martin Price, Director of the Centre for Mountain Studies, Perth College, University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland – with thanks to Euromontana for some of the links!
During the current Covid19 crisis, we have become ever more dependent on the quality of our broadband connections, for many aspects of our lives. All our meetings are now online (I have now used six different platforms!), those of us with children have had to become part-time home teachers (while trying to work full-time…) using online materials provided by their childrens’ schools (and, in the UK, the BBC) and universities have had to rapidly shift their delivery online. For some universities, this is not just a short-term measure: for example, Cambridge University has announced that all lectures will be online until the end of the next academic year.
By Jorge Gimeno Pawlowski, member of the board of Center for Innovative Education (CIE) and advisor for EU affairs.
Writing this article has been an exercise in responsibility, creativity and numerous debates within the Center for Innovative Education (CIE). Having the honour of being the second to write after Tor Arnesen, our partner in NEMOR and author of the great article that precedes this one, is not an easy task. In fact, we had a similar idea of writing about the mountains of opportunities springing from the coronavirus crisis we are experiencing.