Paulo Brando
Associate Professor
paulo.brando@yale.edu
Phone: 203-432-5937
Dr. Paulo Brando is an ecosystem ecologist interested in conservation and management of terrestrial ecosystems for natural climate solutions. His research focuses on quantifying the vulnerability of tropical ecosystems to global changes and identifying potential solutions for climate change mitigation. Dr. Brando’s scientific toolbox includes a combination of field-based studies, manipulation experiments, statistical models, and remote sensing techniques. He also collaborates with a wide range of research specialists for finding long-term solutions to tropical forest sustainability. He is particularly interested in collaborating with policy-oriented NGOs (WoodwellClimate and IPAM, in particular) to disseminate scientific findings about land use change and climate change to a wide range of different societal groups.
CV ResearchGate Publons GoogleScholar
Group members:
Dr. Leandro Maracahipes (Research Scientist)
Dr. Maracahipes is a plant ecologist interested in how plants and ecosystems respond to fire, drought, deforestation, climate change and land use in the tropics. His research focuses on plant functional traits, including both hydraulic and morphological traits. Currently, he is interested in understanding how the synergy between compound disturbance events and extreme drought events affects tree mortality rates and forest composition, structure, and functioning in Amazonia and Cerrado.
Website GoogleScholar
Dr. David Herrera Ramirez (Hutchinson Postdoctoral Associate)
Dr. Herrera is a plant ecophysiologist interested in understanding plants’ physiological and morphological responses to biotic and abiotic stress to assess and predict forest composition and functionality changes in the face of climate change. His current research focuses on understanding tree’s metabolism and cycling of carbon reserves and their contribution to trees and forest resilience. He uses multiple physiological traits, including wood anatomical traits, isotopic measurements, dendrochronology, and modeling to evaluate the response of trees to stress and assess their vulnerability and resilience. He is particularly interested in developing new methods to evaluate tree and ecosystem health in tropical forests.
Dr. Patricia Silva (Postdoctoral Associate)
Patricia Silva’s background is in Energy and Environmental Engineering (MSc), and she is currently finishing her PhD in Geophysical Sciences and Geoinformation in joint supervision by the University of Lisbon and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Most of her work so far has been on studying current and future fire regimes in Brazilian biomes and their climatic and anthropogenic drivers. She has been working with fires in the Cerrado biome for over 8 years, and more recently started studying the Pantanal wetlands. Patricia mostly rely on statistical methods, satellite data, climate re-analyses, and climate models.
Dr. Tatiana Maeda (Postdoctoral Associate)
Tatiana is a Brazilian ecologist interested in assessing the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and evaluating the effectiveness of conservation strategies in safeguarding it, using novel technologies such as bioacoustics in her research. At Yale, she will investigate how animal communities in the Southeast Amazon respond to key degradation drivers and how these changes may influence the ecosystem’s capacity to resist and adapt to climate change.
Lachlan Byrnes (PhD Student)
Lachlan Byrnes received his undergraduate degree in Honours Ecology from the University of British Columbia. While at UBC, he became interested in using plant ecophysiological traits to understand forest disturbance while working in the Michaletz Lab. His work focuses on using ecophysiological traits to explain the changes in structure and function in forest edges. These projects focus on the Amazon-Cerrado region, along the “Arc of Deforestation”. Lachlan’s current projects look at how plant water-use, access to water, and resource allocation can influence mortality in forest edges and as a result change forest structure and function over time.
Nadav Bendavid (PhD Student)
Davi’s research focuses on land-use in the tropics and its effects on regional climate and biogeochemical cycling. Specifically, he is investigating agricultural expansion in the Amazon-Cerrado agricultural frontier and its effects on water, carbon, and energy balances using a combination of field sampling, remote sensing, and micrometeorology. He aims to understand how different agricultural land management approaches can provide climatic services and contribute to better conservation of forested areas. With a background in interdisciplinary geography, he always strives to consider the human dimensions of ecological change alongside the non-human.
Laura Obando (PhD Student)
Laura is a Colombian biologist interested in analyzing human impacts on ecosystems through LULC from ecological and conservation perspectives. Mainly, she is interested in understanding climatic and socioeconomic phenomena’ role in shaping the dynamics of forest fires and their impacts on the Amazon Forest.
Skye Hellenkamp (PhD student)
Skye is a second year Master of Environmental Science student at the Yale School of the Environment. She received my undergraduate degree in Geography from the University of South Alabama where she began researching tropical ecosystems and forest dynamics using remote sensing. Skye is interested in using these technologies to observe the relationships between forest fragmentation and carbon and water cycling within the Amazon, in order to identify regions where conservation policies and practices should be most focused.
Isabela Filgueira (MSc student)
Isabela Filgueira is a first-year Master of Environmental Science student at the Yale School of the Environment and a Three Cairns Scholar. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Brasilia (UnB). Isabela’s research focuses on wildlife movement and faunal contributions to forest structural complexity, particularly in fragmented landscapes within the agricultural frontiers of the southeastern Brazilian Amazon. She has field and laboratory experience through her work with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), and the Laboratory of Insect Ecology at UnB (LECOI). Passionate about biodiversity conservation, she also collaborates with the IUCN Tapir Specialist Group to develop communication strategies aimed at raising awareness about tapir conservation.
Bela Starinchak (Research Associate)
Bela is interested in the capacity of natural climate solutions to serve as modes of restoration in tropical ecosystems. She attended Ohio Wesleyan University, where she earned B.A.’s in Biology and Spanish. Then, in 2023, Bela graduated from James Madison University with her M.S. in Biology, where her research focused on the potential of trees in cattle pastures to capture carbon and restore ecosystem functioning in temperate and dry tropical biomes. For this research, she utilized field inventories, remote sensing, and landowner interviews, and also partnered with local conservation organizations like Yale’s ELTI and Virginia’s CREP. Outside of the lab, she enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and walking her dog, Fig!
Nathalia Potter (Research Associate)
N
athalia holds a BSc in Chemistry and Ecology from Pace University, and a MSc in Environmental Science and GIS from the University of New Haven. Her passion lies in exploring the land use and land cover (LULC) changes and their impacts on carbon and nutrient cycles. In her previous research, she explored ocean acidification and its carbonate chemistry, and nutrient runoff. Currently she works with CO2 eddy covariance flux data, map editing, data analysis, and the overall management of the team.
Interested in joining the lab? Send me an email (paulo.brando@yale.edu) and check out the
Yale School of the Environment website. Diversity, inclusion, and equity form the core values of the ECOSTRESS lab.
Alumni:
Dr. Andreia Ribeiro (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Dr. Maria Uribe (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Felipe Storch de Oliveira (MEM student)
