Ecology of Environmental Change - eChanges

Pedro Gonçalves Vaz

Researcher

Urban and peri-urban ecology Ecosystem services Plant-animal interactions Forest and Agroforestry Ecology Road ecology

Ph.D. in Biology by the University of Évora, with the thesis entitled "Long-term effects of Portuguese forest fires on morphology and aquatic habitat structure of lotic ecosystems". Currently working in the Ecology of Environmental Change group of cE3c. I study patterns, mechanisms, and consequences of ecological interactions in humanized landscapes from an applied perspective. My research at cE3c focuses on linking landscape dynamics, ecosystem services, and biodiversity in the Lisbon metropolitan area. Additionally, I am interested in how plant-animal interactions, such as herbivory and mammal-mediated seed dispersal shape agroforestry systems. Other areas of interest include wildfire ecology (e.g., landscape-wildfire interactions; consequences of wildfire to forest streams), freshwater ecology, road ecology, and statistical modeling. I'm a data analysis enthusiast; I like structuring and revealing existing patterns in data.

Journal Editor: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601); Open Agriculture (ISSN 2391-9531).
Reviewer in funding advisory panels for the Italian and French national funding agencies.

My current research is driven by three overarching objectives:
i) Understand how the spatiotemporal dynamics of the metropolitan landscape affects ecosystem service tradeoffs and biodiversity;
ii) Examining processes and drivers of the regeneration of agroforestry systems under climate change and overgrazing;
iii) Evaluating the impacts of infrastructures such as roads on animal-mediated dispersal of forest seeds.