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Homage to Louis Trabaud

June 6th, 2017 No comments

Louis Trabaud (born in Montpellier, 2nd Feb. 1937) has recently passed away (Collioure, 16th April 2017). He was a research on plant ecology at Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE) of the CNRS, France. He was a pioneer of fire ecology in the Mediterranean Basin and set the basis of this topic for the region; he was especially influential to the fire ecologist of Spain (including me), and was awarded Professor Honoris Causa by the Univeristy of León (Spain) [1]. He was also award in France as Chevalier du Mérite Agricole (Order of Agricultural Merit). As a person, Louis Trabaud was very kind and always happy to help any student.

His research was especially focused on mediterranean shrublands around Montpellier (garrigue), i.e., shublands dominated by Quercus coccifera, Cistus species, Rosmarinus officinalis, Fumana species, etc… sometimes with an overstory of Pinus halepensis. He performed the first fire experiments in the Mediterranean region to study the regeneration of these shrublands, where he recurrently burned them in different seasons to demonstrate their high resilience. He also performed the first studies in the Mediterranean Basin on heat-stimulated germination and on flammability traits. He produced many papers, some in French (the most earlier ones) and others in English, and also wrote or edited some books. The full Trabaud’s publications list (books and scientific papers) is available here.

Louis Trabaud, together with his friend Roger Prodon, organized the International Workshop on Fire Ecology in Banyuls-sur-Mer (south of France) in the years 1992, 1997, 2001; these workshops were key in building the knowledge on fire ecology for the region; they were the meeting point for all mediterranean fire ecologist; we all met there for the first time and we all have very good memories from those meetings.

Participants of the 2001 Banyuls meeting organized by Louis Trabaud (in the middle, with glasses and a pale sweater) and Roger Prodon (second from the right).

 

References
[1] Texto en memoria de Louis Trabaud, por la Universidad de León (in Spanish)