This paper describes a wildfire forecasting application based on a 3D virtual environment and a fire simulation engine. A novel open source framework is presented for the development of 3D graphics applications over large geographic areas, offering high performance 3D visualization and powerful interaction tools for the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community. formation. The user is enabled to simulate and visualize a wildfire spreading on the terrain integrating spatial information on topography and vegetation types with weather and wind data. The application communicates with a remote web service that is in charge of the simulation task. The user may specify several parameters through a friendly interface before the application sends the information to the remote server responsible of carrying out the wildfire forecasting using the FARSITE simulation model. During the process, the server connects to different external resources to obtain up-todate meteorological data. The client application implements a realistic 3Dvisualization of the fire evolution on the landscape. A Level Of Detail (LOD) strategy contributes to improve the performance of the visualization system.

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Aim We explore the idea that most pre‐glacial non‐endemic Canarian flora became endemic to the archipelago by the extinction of its mainland populations during the late Pleistocene glaciations, implying that the extant non‐endemic flora is mostly post‐glacial: the ‘late Pleistocene endemicity increase hypothesis’. Taxon The native flora of the Canarian archipelago. Methods We statistically compare the distributions of 2087 Canarian endemic and native non‐endemic plants across islands. We also carry out connectivity analyses using their dispersal paths, obtained by connecting all the islands of occurrence for each taxon. Results While the distribution of the endemic flora is strongly L‐shaped (with a much higher proportion of Single‐Island Endemics than Multiple‐Island Endemics), that of the native non‐endemics is U‐shaped (i.e. similar prevalence of single‐island taxa and taxa distributed on all islands). The native non‐endemics have a significantly lower proportion of single‐island taxa and a higher proportion of widespread taxa than the endemics. Most dispersal paths in the endemics connect the central and western islands, whereas they are extended across all islands in the native non‐endemics. Main conclusions The contrasting distributional patterns of the endemics and the native non‐endemics support an outstanding role of species diversification in the endemic flora, but a still negligible influence of the insular selective and stochastic pressures (including extinction) in the native non‐endemic flora, arguably due to its recent origin. Our results suggest that the high endemicity levels of the extant Canarian flora can be explained by two complementary processes: (i) high diversification rates throughout the ontogeny of the archipelago, often from colonisers that attained a widespread distribution prior to speciation, and (ii) an ‘endemicity increase’ during the late Pleistocene glaciations, whereby most of the pre‐glacial non‐endemic Canarian flora became endemic due to the extinction of its mainland conspecific populations, thus emphasising the role of the Canaries as climatic refugia.

El proyecto NEXTGENDEM (MAC2/4.6d/236, https://lupus.itccanarias.org/nextgendem/es/) complementa múltiples disciplinas de investigación para proporcionar datos científicos contrastados y validados que faciliten a los gestores la toma de decisiones de conservación más informadas. A consecuencia de la movilización y el enriquecimiento de los bancos de muestras y datos del Jardín Botánico Canario “Viera y Clavijo” – UA CSIC y del Instituto Nacional de Investigação e Desenvolvimento Agrário de Cabo Verde, se pondrán a punto herramientas para la estimación de la diversidad filogenética de la flora terrestre insular, la aproximación a la identificación taxonómica molecular de muestras, la reconstrucción de filogenias, y el análisis territorial integrado con variables bióticas y abióticas. Nuestro objetivo principal es organizar, analizar y aplicar el conocimiento científico más relevante para guiar actuaciones in situ y ex situ que mejoren el estado de conservación de las floras de Gran Canaria (Islas Canarias) y Santiago (Cabo Verde), aunque prevemos incorporar otros territorios macaronésicos en futuros proyectos