Miguel B. Araújo has authored over 100 publications in internationally refereed journals and books and is one of the top 1% most cited researchers in the field of environment/ ecology.
He is a senior researcher of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and a visiting ‘Rui Nabeiro’ Biodiversity Chair (full Professor) at University of Évora. Dr. Araújo is also a Senior Research Associate of the Oxford University Centre for the Environment, an international collaborator of the Copenhagen University Centre for Macroecology, and a member of the International Laboratory on Global Change, a joint venture between the CSIC and the Pontificia Catholic University of Chile.
Dr. Araújo also serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Ecography, associate editor of the Journal of Biogeography, Conservation Letters, Geography Compass, and is member of the scientific committee of DIVERSITAS’ bioDISCOVERY programme.
After reading for his PhD in Geography at the University College London and the Natural History Museum (with Paul Williams, Dick Vane Wright, and Caroline Harrison), he undertook post doctoral research in the ‘Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionelle et Evolutive‘ at the CNRS in Montpellier (with Sandra Lavorel). He was then awarded a Marie Curie fellowship to undertake research at the University of Oxford (with Rob Wittaker and Paul Williams), after which he spent a year at the University of Copenhagen as a visiting Associate Professor (with Carsten Rahbek). Currently, he continues to travel extensively, and remains an active collaborator of several research groups in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, France, South Africa, Switzerland, US, and UK.
Dr. Araújo has a wide range of interests in biogeography, conservation planning, global change biology, and macroecology. Earlier work included the development of reserve-selection techniques that minimise species extinctions within reserves. It was demonstrated that proposed techniques can improve persistence of species. More recently, niche models have been used to investigate impacts of climate change on species’ distributions. The goal is to better understand the sources of uncertainty in models and to propose approaches to reduce them. A study provided the first test of the performance of models under climate change and demonstrated the value of ensemble forecasting. Currently, research focuses on the history of global climates during the Tertiary and the Quaternary and how these affected current patterns of species richness.
Dr, Araújo has been principal or co-principal researcher in 10 research projects, including three large European funded consortiums on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and one FBBVA-funded international project involving Mexican and Brazilian partners to investigate climate change impacts on the biodiversity of Latin America. He was awarded €500,000 under the Rui Nabeiro Biodiversity Chair to promote higher education and high-level research in biodiversity and global change. He also provides consultancy to the Spanish and Portuguese Environmental Ministries on issues related to climate change impacts on Iberian biodiversity, and to the Council of Europe on climate change and European protected areas. Overall he contributed to raise more than EUR 22.000.000 for research projects. His work is regularly featured in the scientific and popular press, with several studies receiving high international coverage.
