The research of Carles Martín-Closas falls in the fields of the palaeobotany and micropalaeontology. It is focused on the taxonomy, palaeoecology, biogeography, evolution, and biostratigraphy of aquatic fossil plants, mainly charophytes. His doctoral thesis (University of Barcelona-UB, 1990) was devoted to the fossil charophytes from the Lower Cretaceous of Eastern Spain and was largely developed thanks to a predoctoral fellowship from the Catalan Government and developed at the Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution in Montpellier (France). Since 1991 he is professor ('profesor titular de universidad') at the Faculty of Earth Sciences-UB, where he has taught and coordinated the matters 'Biology', 'Palaeontology' and 'Palaeobotany' in the Degree of Geology and 'Palaeobotany' at the inter-university Master of Palaeobiology and the Fossil Record (UB-UAB).
He has published about 160 scientific papers in international and Spanish journals, book chapters and 2 books, with 100 papers indexed (Journal of Citation Records). The results of his research have contributed to a better definition of the charophyte biozonation for the Early Cretaceous, Upper Cretaceous, Eocene and Oligocene, the correlation of charophyte biozones with standard marine biozones (foraminifera and ammonites) and their calibration with the Geological Time Scale with help of the magnetostratigraphy and strontium isotope stratigraphy. The improved charophyte biozonation for these periods led to a better age attribution and correlation of many of the non-marine stratigraphic sequences of the Lower Cretaceous of the Iberian Chain, Uppermost Cretaceous of the Pyrenees and Eocene-Oligocene of the Ebro basin and the Balearic Islands. Outside Spain he has also contributed to the charophyte biostratigraphy of non-marine deposits of the Lower Cretaceous from the Subalpine Chains and the Jura (France and Switzerland), Rumania, Tunisia and the Upper Cretaceous of the Patagonian basins (Argentina) and N-Chinese basins. The palaeobiogeography of charophytes is the main aim of his present research in collaboration with other specialists working in the same subject with foraminifera, ostracods, and vascular plants.
Beyond the study of charophytes, he also devoted a significant part of his research to the paleoenvironmental reconstruction of wetland and aquatic plant communities from the Late Carboniferous, Early and Late Cretaceous and the Cenozoic, by integration of facies analysis and taphonomic analysis. Among these studies stand out his contributions to the understanding of the latest Carboniferous intramontane wetlands from the Catalan Pyrenees (Spain) and the Montagne Noire (France), the Early Cretaceous wetlands of Las Hoyas and El Montsec (Spain) and the Miocene paleolake from La Cerdanya (Catalan Pyrenees, Spain).
From 2008 to 2016 he was elected president from the international association for the study of extant and fossil charophytes (IRGC) with more than 100 associates worldwide. Since 2005 he has been leader of 4 consecutive competitive projects from the Spanish Ministry of Science. He is associate editor of the indexed journal Geologica Acta and invited editor for other international journals. He has been supervisor or co-supervisor of 6 PhD theses related to fossil charophytes, other fossil algae and vascular plants. From 2010 to 2016 he has coordinated the Doctorate Program in Earth Sciences at the UB. He is now president of the Doctorate Committee of the Faculty of Earth Sciences-UB and secretary of the Dean at the same faculty.
