Sandra Lavorel is a specialist in functional ecology, a discipline she played a key role in founding, and mimics the effects of global warming on alpine meadows. She studies in depth the functioning not of individual organisms, but of an entire ecosystem, in order to establish the essential services they provide: food, fuel, materials, carbon storage, water quality, resistance to erosion, crop pollination, etc.
To do this, she needs to map the different environments in detail, and list and measure plants, insects and animals. This enables computer modelling, essential for short-, medium- and long-term forecasts.
These analyses find an extension in the steering of biodiversity assessments at both national and international level, with the aim not only of taking stock of the situation, but also of proposing solutions.
