The Centre for Water Research and Technical Development (Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico del Agua, CIDTA) of the University of Salamanca is coordinating for four years (2014-2017) a European project that seeks new biotechnologies for treating industrial water contaminated with metals. Spanish, Portuguese, and French researchers are currently studying at a laboratory scale three different processes for eliminating metals from water by means of various biological components and processes. Shortly and as from the third year of the project three demonstration plants will be built in three industrial factories, one from the mining sector, one from the metallic sector, and one from the ceramics sector.

Fire Ecology is the scientific discipline that studies the role of fire in organisms and ecosystems. Despite the fact that fire has a generally negative connotation, it is part of the ecosystem and there is evidence that it has occurred ever since the appearance of land plants millions of years ago in the Palaeozoic, and that it has therefore influenced their evolution. For instance, ecosystems prone to fire, such as those of the Mediterranean, are dominated by vegetation that is adapted to fire as a result of this long association.