Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
1. Department. The Universidad Autónoma de Madrid is a public university established in 1968 with around 28,500 undergraduate students and 4700 students at doctoral level. The academic and research staff includes 2380 employees and the administrative and technical staff around 1000 people who participate in 1300 active research projects. Total budget of the UAM in 2008 was ~300 M€.
2. Expertise. The Department of Biology, Botany Unit, comprises researchers in systematics, phylogeny and evolution of vascular plants and bryophytes, plant conservation, vegetation ecology and biogeography, and ethnobotany. Although most of the developed research is focused on the Mediterranean region, applied research for biodiversity conservation is particularly developing on tropical countries, mainly in the Neotropics. The combination of floristic and ecological vegetation studies and studies on plant uses by people (indigenous and mestizo) have been carried out in the last 10 years.
3. Main contributions of the team to the project: UAM will lead WP 3 - Products provided by palms to local people, which analyzes the diversity and abundance of palm uses, the intensities of resource use for palm products in local communities, and estimate future needs and provisions of these products throughout northwestern South America. UAM also contributes to WP 7 - Compilation and organization of information that will gather existing information about palm uses and trade, and its implications in northwestern South America and, to organize this information in a data-base to be used for all the project partners.
