Tropical Forest Ecology, Restoration and Conservation in Human-modified Landscapes

Tropical and subtropical forests are vital ecosystems, providing ecosystem services (e.g., carbon storage) and sheltering nearly half of Earth's biodiversity. However, half of its original coverage has vanished and what's left undergoes increasing human pressures. Understanding how these threatened ecosystems work and how they respond to human pressures is the key to the conservation of its diversity and the restoration of its functioning. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of my experience working with tropical forests, mainly in the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot in South America. More specifically, I will present some of my research results (previous and ongoing) related to the following topics: (i) Forest Regeneration; (ii) Community Ecology; (iii) Human impacts on tropical forests; (iv) Ecological Restoration of Tropical Forests; and (v) Biological Conservation. I will also present the Neotropical Tree Communities database (TreeCo), a long-term project that synthesizes the available knowledge on Neotropical forests, with a current focus on extra-Amazonian Brazilian biomes. Finally, I will present some of the future research plans and some ongoing collaborations.