Johanna San Pedro is the latest addition to the Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services Research Group at IIASA. We wanted to take this opportunity to share her journey before IIASA, her passions, and what makes her a unique addition to the FLAM team.

Johanna is well-positioned to bring invaluable insights to her new role in the FLAM team and is anticipated to significantly contribute to the ongoing projects. She will mainly help in the day-to-day operations of the FLAM team, where the focus is on developing and applying the wildFire cLimate impacts and Adaptation Model (FLAM), which is best used to reproduce historical wildfire events and project future burned areas. She will be involved in data processing, fire probability modeling, hotspot mapping and research publications.

Johanna has double master's degrees in European Forestry from the University of Eastern Finland and in Spatial and Ecological Modelling in European Forest Science from the Universitat de Lleida, Spain. Her professional background focused on natural resources management, environmental policy, and international collaboration on forest restoration. In addition, she has hands-on experience working on environmental project operations, project proposal preparation and forest monitoring.

Johanna San Pedro © Pavel Kiparisov

Johanna San Pedro

Joining IIASA: Johanna sees her IIASA involvement as an opportunity to expand her knowledge and work on pressing ecological issues like climate change. She values all that IIASA has to offer, such as the opportunity for collaboration, an interactive and diverse  working environment, and mentorship from a broad range of successful researchers. She believes that the work produced by AFE, such as their wildfire model FLAM, are important tools that help influence policy decisions regarding climate change and associated challenges. She is excited to contribute to projects with long-term and real-world impact. She’s keen to dedicate her time at IIASA to explore and expand the use of FLAM in socio-economic analysis, prescribing adaptive forest management strategies, and in policy formulation. Johanna looks forward to producing higher resolution outputs that will be useful in understanding and combatting wildfires, which have been accelerated climate change and pose a  major threat ecologically and socio-economically. She is looking forward to promoting FLAM, improving the practicality of its use by forest owners as well as the policy and decision makers, and publishing research articles to share results and implications with the public in an understandable manner.

A Personal Touch: Johanna brings vibrancy to her professional life. She has dedicated her professional life theme song, "We’ve Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters,  to her fresh start at IIASA. Coffee and peanut butter-flavored Snickers are her go-to brain-fuel. Outside the workplace, Johanna is a fur mom, foodie, and wanderlust. She is also a shutterbug and ukulele-strummer, an avid reader and a meme sharer – and we are excited to have her as part of the FLAM team!

A Note from Johanna: "I am thrilled to be part of a team that shapes solutions to global challenges. Here's to growing together and making a lasting impact!"

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to Johanna.

News

Photo of wetlands

04 July 2024

ALFAwetlands: assessing mid-term project milestones

IIASA researchers are part of the ALFAwetlands project, which aims to map wetlands in the European Union and assess restoration measures to provide maximum benefits for climate and biodiversity. The project partners recently gathered for a Midterm Conference to review implementation progress, present and exchange current results, and discuss further plans.
Network Grid Connected Wave in Blue Color Tone

26 June 2024

Wavelet phase difference and granger causality: Evidence connecting phase difference inference to granger causality

When it comes to practical solutions, finding causal links is one of the holy grails in all disciplines of science. Although Granger-type causality doesn’t prove actual causality, it becomes a powerful tool for analyzing any system once it’s coupled with theoretical reasoning. Recent advances in wavelet analysis as a tool to unravel the patterns and coherence among different phenomena raise the question of whether such coherence can be used to indicate causality.
KunstHaus Wien

21 May 2024

IIASA is among the scientific partners of the Vienna Climate Biennale with CircEUlar project

The first Vienna Climate Biennale started its 100 day long festival program in April. CircEUlar is among the scientific partners of the Biennale, providing content on the potential of circular economy strategies to combat climate change.