Arantza IRIARTE

She took a BSc in Biology (1985) at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), followed by an MSc (1986) and a PhD (1992) in oceanography at the University of Southampton (UK). Presently she works as an associate professor at the UPV/EHU, having four recognized 5-yr teaching periods. In addition, she belongs to the consolidated research group on “Marine and Estuarine Plankton” at this university and has four recognized 6-yr research periods. She completed her PhD studies on the relevance of picophytoplankton in coastal and estuarine waters with a Basque Government scholarship at the University of Southampton. She then enjoyed a 2-year (1992-1994) postdoc scholarship (Basque Government) at the UPV/EHU to study microplankton ecology in estuaries. Since 1996 she has been a member of academia at the UPV/EHU, except for the period 2001-2003, when she took a 2-yr researcher position at Southampton University (UK) to study the dynamics of algal blooms (HABES EU project). Over the last decade or so her studies have centered on the assessment of the effects of climate and local anthropogenic activities on water quality and plankton biodiversity and dynamics based on the analysis of time-series. She collaborates with the ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea) Working Group of Zooplankton Ecology, contributing to the analysis of interannual changes in North Atlantic zooplankton and to the elaboration of ICES Zooplankton Status Reports. In that respect, she has participated together with researchers from the “Plymouth Marine Laboratory” and “Marine Scotland Science” in a project for the assessment of the effect of environmental factors on the latitudinal variations of the temporal dynamics of mesozooplankton in the NECS province (BUPS). Additionally, she collaborates with the International Group for Marine Ecological Time Series (IGMETS) to study the interannual zooplankton dynamics at global scale and contributes to the COPEPEDIA database. She has also undertaken studies on the suitability of metabarcoding methods as compared to traditional microscope methods for the identification of zooplankton in estuaries. Another line of research she is working on is the distribution of non-indigenous zooplankton species and their impact on the biodiversity and ecosystem services of estuaries. She is co-chair of the recently created EUROBUS (Towards a European observatory of the invasion of Pseudodiaptomus marinus) Working Group within ICES with researchers from 14 countries. She has participated as a researcher in 26 projects financed either by international or overseas institutions [EU, NERC (UK)] or national ones (Spanish Ministry, Basque Government, UPV/EHU, UNESCO Chair); she has also undertaken consultancy work for government or private companies. In addition, she is author or co-author of 40 scientific publications in international indexed journals and 3 book chapters, amongst others; she has more than 60 communications at international scientific conferences. Her Scopus h-index is of 18. Regarding her teaching activities, at present, she teaches the course “Ecology” (in Basque and in English) within the degree of Environmental Sciences at the UPV/EHU. In addition, she co-teaches the course “Degradation and rehabilitation of estuaries” (in English) in the MSc in Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (CTA), the Erasmus Mundus MSc in Environmental Contamination and Toxicology Plus (ECT+) and the Erasmus Mundus MSc in «Marine Environment and Resources», as well as the courses “Protection, Restauration & Management of Resources” and “Alterations of the Physical Environment and Pollution”, both in the MSc in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning and Management (within the coastal and estuarine systems module), all of them taught at the UPV/EHU.