De Gracia Marin Cristina

Cristina de Gracia Marin completed her Master of Science (MSc) at the Menéndez Pelayo International University, coordinated by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in 2021. During her MSc thesis she analyzed butterfly community responses to changes over space and time to vegetation encroachment and climate change in central Spain. To do so, she used the data from the National Atlas of Spain with occurrence records from 1975 to 2016 from two mountainous systems of the Iberian Peninsula. This topic sparked her interest in butterflies and gave her experience on data analysis with R, and Geographic Information System (GIS).

She is currently pursuing her PhD thesis as part of the VANESSA and REPICA projects, which investigates the impact of extensive livestock farming on butterfly populations in alpine ecosystems, along with the use of citizen science in studying these effects. Her research utilizes data from the Catalan Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (CBMS), a large-scale citizen science program coordinated by the Natural Science Museum of Granollers (MCNG). She began her career as a technician for the CBMS, where she gained extensive experience in butterfly fieldwork and data analysis. Her main research interests focus on the anthropogenic effects on biodiversity, particularly the ecology and behavior of butterfly populations, and the role of citizen science in ecological research.