I am a tropical plant ecologist mostly interested in forest regeneration and ecosystems restoration.
I obtained my bachelor in Biology from the University of São Paulo and developed my MSc thesis on ecological restoration of the Atlantic Forest at UNICAMP University, both in Brazil. Later on I moved to Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon, with a fellow scholarship to join the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia-INPA. There I researched the effects of land use history on secondary succession and the options for management aiming for the restoration of degraded secondary forests with local farmers (www.pioneiras.blogspot.com).
In 2015 I defended my PhD thesis "Resilience of Amazonian landscapes to agricultural intensification" at Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands. In my thesis I evaluated the consequences of agricultural intensification of swidden cultivation systems for forest regrowth and livelihoods in the Brazilian Amazon. The research shows how intensification-driven changes in landscape dynamics, recovery capacity, productivity and management practices can affect the resilience of Amazonian swidden-fallow systems.
In 2016 I joined the Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group in the FOREFRONT project that evaluated ecosystem services in multiple agricultural landscapes in Latin America.
During 2017 - 2019 I worked as a researcher at the International Institute for Sustainability in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, where we developed models for identifying priority areas for restoration in Brazil and across the globe.
In 2019 I rejoined the FEM Group at Wageningen University, where I am part of the coordination of the 2ndFOR network on secondary forests, which is the largest database on secondary forests in Latin America and is being expanded to the Pantropics.