Biography

I have a PhD degree in Biology (1996, University of Lisbon). From 1997 to 2015, I worked at the Institute of Agronomy (Technical University of Lisbon), where I focused my research on fire ecology and the links between agricultural management and biodiversity. In 2015, I moved to CIBIO (University of Porto), as I won a position as Principal Investigator of the REN Biodiversity Chair, a partnership between Porto University and the Portuguese company responsible for electricity and gas transport in the country to set a research agenda on the impacts of power lines on biodiversity. In addition, I also won an Investigador FCT contract to develop research on modelling the impact of changing agricultural policies on biodiversity and ecosystem services. I am the principal investigator of the CIBIO research group 'AGRODIV - Biodiversity in Agricultural and Forest Ecosystems’. My current research interests cover four different topics: (i) the links between agricultural management and biodiversity and ecosystem services. (ii) the impacts of climate change on farmland management and biodiversity; (iii) fire ecology and post-fire management; (iv) the impact of linear infrastructures on biodiversity. I have been publishing since 1990, with a total of 162 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, ranging a wide variety of topics. According to the Web of Knowledge citation metrics, I have an h-index of 35 and a total number of 4645 citations. Google scholar citations sum to 8160, with an h-index of 47. Many of the papers were published in top journals including Science, Biological Reviews, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. I was the main editor of a book on fire ecology published in 2012 by Springer, and reviewed ca. 80 papers for 41 journals. I was a member of the editorial board of the journal PLoS ONE (2013-2018). I was given awards for my scientific productivity at the Prizes Technical University of Lisbon/Santander in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 (first prize). Since 1990, I participated in 41 scientific projects. I coordinated 15 national projects and participated in 11 EU funded projects. I was the Chair of COST Action FP0701 Post-fire management in Southern Europe (2008-2012; with 22 participating countries) and the coordinator of the PHOENIX project center of the European Forest Institute (2005-2012), a consortium of 25 research organizations carrying out research on fire ecology. I supervised 11 Graduation, 10 Master, 7 PhD, and 9 Post-docs students, and am currently supervising 8 PhD. I am a member of the Board of Education of the PhD Programme SUSFOR Sustainable forests and products (University of Lisbon). I was a Member of the Board of the Society for Conservation Biology Europe section (2013-2019) and participated in the IPBES assessment on land degradation and restoration (2015-2018).