Biodiversity researcher Camille Parmesan receives BBVA Award
Rising global temperatures are having a significant impact on biodiversity. Many animal and plant species are forced to move poleward or to higher altitudes. Camille Parmesan (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; University of Texas, United States; and University of Plymouth, United Kingdom) demonstrated already in the 1990s that butterflies were escaping rising temperatures by moving north, and she robustly attributed this to climate change. Her subsequent work has shown that thousands of animal and plant species around the globe are responding to climate change by moving geographically, both on land and in the ocean. For this outstanding work, Parmesan recently received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the “Climate Change and Environmental Sciences” category.
“Camille Parmesan’s pioneering work and leadership have helped give birth to the new field of Climate Change Ecology,“ says Bjorn Stevens, committee chair and director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. “The results of this research have major significance for human life, whether it is the poleward spread of mosquito-borne tropical diseases, the choice of crops that can be successfully grown in a particular region, or the type of marine species found in certain fishing grounds.”
About the BBVA Awards
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards were established in 2008 to recognize outstanding contributions in various scientific, technological and artistic fields, and knowledge-based responses to the central challenges of the 21st century. In its 17th edition, the award category “Climate Change” had been renamed “Climate Change and Environmental Sciences” to allow for a broader recognition of innovations that help societies and ecosystems adapt to climate change, or technologies that could help mitigation.