Karen Castaño-Quintana

Profile

I am a postgraduate researcher at the Sustainability Research Institute, working together with Martin Dallimer (SRI), David Williams (SRI) and Julián Chará from the Research Centre CIPAV in Colombia. My project aims to assess the diversity of pollinators insects in a livestock farming landscape with Silvopastoral Systems and the role of these systems in the conservation of pollination insect communities in places where livestock is already stablished. In addition, the pollination service will be measure in the silvopastoral systems. This research is part of the SLUS project “Implementing sustainable agricultural and livestock systems for simultaneous targeting of forest conservation for climate change mitigation (REDD+) and peace-building in Colombia” supported by The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). The SLUS project is implemented by CIAT, together with the Centre for Research on Sustainable Agriculture (CIPAV), Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, and Thünen-Institut.

I graduated from the University of Valle (Colombia) with BSc in Biology, and I was working in the CIPAV Research Centre in several projects related with sustainable food systems, restauration and biodiversity conservation.

Research interests

• Biodiversity conservation
• Ecology
• Restauration
• Ecosystem services
• Entomology

Research groups and institutes

• Sustainability Research Institute