Biography

Juan José Oñate Rubalcaba (#ORCID: 0000-0002-6984-2615) is Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology at the UAM, where he has been teaching and researching regularly since 2001. Previously he worked as a consultant in Environmental Impact Assessment and Land Use Planning. He is a member of the Research Group in Ecology and Conservation of Terrestrial Ecosystems and of the Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Cambio Global, both at the UAM. He has been an elected member of the Science Faculty Board (2007-2010), and Director of the Dept. of Ecology (2010-2014) and has served as Vice-Dean of Post-graduate Studies (2019-2021).

His doctoral thesis (1993) consisted of a pioneering characterization of climate change in the Iberian Peninsula based on the analysis of instrumental data series since 1900 collected at 11 meteorological stations, whose main results were published in 3 very novel articles in Spain in those years. Subsequently, he focused on applied aspects linked to environmental assessment and restoration. Originally, he worked on more technical issues, highlighting his leading role in the environmental assessment of the Railway Sector Plan and the Natura 2000 Network (INECO, 2006), as well as in contracts with industry and the private sector for impact assessments and environmental consulting. Subsequently, he developed methodological approaches, in particular on the novel Strategic Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programs. Based on his experience in relevant research contracts with private companies and with the Public Works Experimentation Center (CEDEX) of the Ministry of Public Works, the results were reflected in the first book in Spanish on Strategic Environmental Assessment, of which he was the first author.

Between 1996 and 1999 he participated as a researcher in the project Implementation and Effectiveness of EU Agri-environmental Schemes established under Regulation 2078/92 (European Commission FAIR1 CT95-274), pioneer in the evaluation of agri-environmental measures of the Common Agricultural Policy. Since then, he has focused his research interest on agricultural ecology issues, and in particular on the interactions between biodiversity and agriculture and agricultural policies. He has participated until today in several national (2 as PR, 4 as R) and European (5 as PR, 3 as R) projects and research contracts on the response of bird, insect or weed communities to factors of intensification or abandonment of agriculture at plot and landscape level, mainly in rainfed cereal systems and occasionally in extensive grassland and permanent crop environments. In this field, he has contributed to the valorization of Spanish extensive agricultural environments in terms of associated biodiversity and to the recognition of their peculiarities compared to the more intensified systems of central and northern Europe. He has also worked on the ecology and management of the Common vole in Castilla y León and of the predator species involved in the biological control of its pests, contributing to the eradication of rodenticide treatments. With a more applied orientation, he has also been involved in the analysis of the available agricultural policy instruments, the design of innovative evaluation methodologies and the formulation, compilation and calculation of environmental and socioeconomic indicators for the evaluation of the effectiveness of agri-environmental measures and conditionality, and the identification and evaluation of agricultural systems of high natural value. In this field he has worked both in the framework of European research projects, as well as in contracts of research relevance for the Ministry of Agriculture and WWF-Spain, also incorporating the socio-economic dimension, through surveys and interviews with farmers, ranchers and managers, seeking to broaden the applicability of the results of the more biological research. Also for this reason, in his approach to these issues he has sought interaction with specialists in Agronomy, Sociology or Economics, convinced of the need for a trans-disciplinary approach to improve the state of conservation of nature linked to agrarian environments.

In addition to his role as a professor at the University, he has developed an extensive task of dissemination on these issues, giving more than 60 lectures in courses and seminars for various public, national and European institutions and entities, as well as in non-specialized publications, convinced of the need to expand the range of end users of the research.

As a result of all this, he has published 4 books in national publishing houses, 12 international and 19 national book chapters, 30 articles in JCR scientific journals, 8 in national journals and 8 popular articles.

He has participated as a scientific expert in the evaluation in the Plant Biology, Animal and Ecology area for the National Agency for Evaluation and Foresight (ANEP; 2007 to 2011).