Associate researchers
Eugenia Gayo | Director
Working packages
Since her undergraduate studies, Eugenia has focused on understanding the mechanisms that have shaped the evolution of South American arid and semi-arid ecosystems at different time scales (from millions of years to decades).
Combining theories and methodologies from Ecology, Biogeochemistry, Paleontology, Biogeography, Paleoclimatology and Archeology, she has developed a research agenda on Historical Ecology. This has allowed her to develop an integrative and fresh perspective to understand the feedback between biophysical and social systems in Chile, from the Tertiary period to the Anthropocene.
Carola Flores | Alternate Director
Working package
Since her beginnings as an anthropologist (mayor in archaeology), Carola has focused on archaeo-malacological analysis and the study of human gathering strategies. Later through her postgraduate degree, she explored new tools to study human-environment interactions and how it influenced human adaptation strategies.
Through different methodological approaches, her research focuses on reconstructing environmental and socioeconomic contexts of human societies that inhabited the Pacific coast of America.
Catalina Aguirre
Working package
Catalina is a physical oceanographer that has dedicated the majority of her career to the study of the Humboldt Coastal upwelling System, focusing her investigation on the atmospheric forcing, upwelling processes and oceanographic surface and subsurface circulation at different spatiotemporal scales.
Her investigation has combined global and regional coupled ocean-atmosphere models, together with satellite data and in-situ measurements, to study various topics related to the Humboldt Coastal upwelling System for the past, present and future climate.
Bernardo Broitman
Working package
Bernardo is an ecologist dedicated to understanding how environmental forcing regulates patterns of distribution and abundance of marine species in different coastal upwelling ecosystems of the world.
He focuses on the study of rocky coastal habitats, the intertidal zone and the shallow subtidal zone, where he has developed and implemented different techniques to estimate the impact of oceanographic variability on ecological processes; combining the use of satellite data, instrumental data and long term field observations.
Claudio Latorre
Working package
Claudio is a paleoecologist/paleoclimatologist that first implemented the study of rodent middens to understand the recent past of the Atacama desert. He is a specialist on stable isotopes analysis of macrofossils obtained from the recent geologic record.
He is trained in biology and geosciences and his research is centered on understanding the complex relationship between climate, vegetation, and human history in arid and semi-arid environments, which covers from the last glacial period to historical times.
Antonio Maldonado
Working package
Antonio is a biologist specialized in paleoecology and paleoclimatology. He has applied the study of fossil pollen to various paleoenvironmental records, and archeological excavations in arid and semi-arid areas of Chile.
The diversity of the areas that he has studied throughout Chile, from the Atacama desert to Patagonia, allows him to have a broad and complementary vision of the relation between human occupations and environmental changes.
