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This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natural resources in Catalonia, a country that is representative of European countries in general, and especially those in the Mediterranean region. It analyses the use of natural resources made by mining, agriculture, livestock, logging, fishing, nature tourism, and energy production and consumption. This use results in an ecological footprint, i.e., the productive land and sea surface required to generate the consumed resources and absorb the resulting waste, which is about seven times the amount available, a very high number but very similar to other European countries. This overexploitation of natural resources has a huge impact on land and its different forms of cover, air, and water. For the last 25 years, forests and urban areas have each gained almost 3% more of the territory at the expense of agricultural land; those municipalities bordering the sea have increased their number of inhabitants and activity, and although they only occupy 6.7% of the total surface area, they account for 43.3% of the population; air quality has stabilized since the turn of the century, and there has been some improvement in the state of aquatic ecosystems, but still only 36% are in good condition, while the remainder have suffered morphological changes and different forms of nonpoint source pollution; meanwhile the biodiversity of flora and fauna remains still under threat. Environmental policies do not go far enough so there is a need for revision of the legislation related to environmental impact and the protection of natural areas, flora, and fauna. The promotion of environmental research must be accompanied by environmental education to foster a society which is more knowledgeable, has more control and influence over the decisions that deeply affect it. Indeed, nature conservation goes hand in hand with other social and economic challenges that require a more sustainable vision. Today’s problems with nature derive from the current economic model, which is environmentally unsustainable in that it does not take into account environmental impacts. Lastly, we propose a series of reasonable and feasible priority measures and actions related to each use made of the country’s natural resources, to the impacts they have had, and to their management, in the hope that these can contribute to improving the conservation and management of the environment and biodiversity and move towards sustainability.

As it is well known, the Bologna Process is a voluntary intergovernmental European cooperation initiative that led to the creation of the named European Higher Education Area (EHEA). EHEA was formed to promote mobility, increase academic recognition and attract students and staff from around the world to Europe. On the other hand, since September 2016, the Technical University of Catalonia (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC) – BarcelonaTech has a new Campus in Barcelona City, the Diagonal-Besòs Campus. In this new Campus appears the Eastern Barcelona School of Engineering (Escola d’Enginyeria de Barcelona Est, EEBE), with new Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees. In this framework, also since September 2016, the EEBE is offering the new 4-year Bachelor’s Degree in Energy Engineering with a total number of 240 ECTS credits. Current article deals with the inclusion of the course about sizing and design of renewable energy systems in the context of this degree. In particular, and although this topic was eventually abandoned in the initial degree curriculum, the paper presents the development of a 3rd-year course, Renewable Energies, that focuses on this topic.

What commonalities are there in sustainable or unsustainable heating practices in five high-income, high-emitting western European countries? What preferences do a nationally representative sample of the public in these countries hold towards low-carbon options? It is imperative that climate policy researchers and practitioners grapple with the difficulty of decarbonizing heat, which remains the largest single end-use service worldwide and which accounts about half of total final energy consumption. Based on a comparative assessment of five representative national surveys in Germany (N = 2009), Italy (N = 2039), Spain (N = 2038), Sweden (N = 2023), and the United Kingdom (N = 2000), this study explores the demographics and geography of household heat decarbonisation in Europe. By analyzing our country level data as well as our combined sample of 10,109 respondents, it investigates how people conceive of the purposes of low-carbon heat, their preferences for particular forms of heat supply, and their (at times odd) practices of heat consumption and temperature settings. Grounded in its original data, the study organizes its findings inductively across the five themes of literacy (heating knowledge, awareness and control), sustainability (heating practices, dynamics and conflicts), temperature (heating satisfaction and preferences), desirability of change (low-carbon heating priorities, business models and trust), and culture (country and national variation). The study also explores intersections between these dimensions, using multivariate analysis, as well as how preferences differ according to varying types of actors as well as geography and space. The authors gratefully acknowledge support from UK Research and Innovation through the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), grant reference number EP/R035288/1. This paper has also received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 764025.

© 2020 The Authors Spruce-fir-beech mixed forests cover a large area in European mountain regions, with high ecological and socio-economic importance. As elevation-zone systems they are highly affected by climate change, which is modifying species growth patterns and productivity shifts among species. The extent to which associated tree species can access resources and grow asynchronously may affect their resistance and persistence under climate change. Intra-specific synchrony in annual tree growth is a good indicator of species specific dependence on environmental conditions variability. However, little attention has been paid to explore the role of the inter-specific growth asynchrony in the adaptation of mixed forests to climate change. Here we used a database of 1790 tree-ring series collected from 28 experimental plots in spruce-fir-beech mixed forests across Europe to explore how spatio-temporal patterns of the intra- and inter-specific growth synchrony relate to climate variation during the past century. We further examined whether synchrony in growth response to inter-annual environmental fluctuations depended on site conditions. We found that the inter-specific growth synchrony was always lower than the intra-specific synchrony, for both high (inter-annual fluctuations) and low frequency (mid- to long-term) growth variation, suggesting between species niche complementarity at both temporal levels. Intra- and inter-specific synchronies in inter-annual growth fluctuations significantly changed along elevation, being greater at higher elevations. Moreover, the climate warming likely induced temporal changes in synchrony, but the effect varied along the elevation gradient. The synchrony strongly intensified at lower elevations likely due to climate warming and drying conditions. Our results suggest that intra- and inter-specific growth synchrony can be used as an indicator of temporal niche complementarity among species. We conclude that spruce-fir-beech mixtures should be preferred against mono-specific forests to buffer climate change impacts in mountain regions. Forest Ecology and Management, 479 ISSN:0378-1127 ISSN:1872-7042