Each year, human activities transport hundreds of species intentionally or non-intentionally to other parts of the planet. At the same time, environmental and human pressures such as land use and climatic changes are reshaping the distribution of biological communities and of ecosystems.
So, how are these processes reshaping the distribution of life on Earth?
How is the distribution of ecosystems changing in response to the ongoing pressures?
How is this affecting biodiversity and human welfare?
The Biogeographic Change and Predictive Modelling Team (BIOCHANGE) brings together a number of researchers that aim to answer to these and related questions. Our work is centred around three main research themes:
The quantification, mapping and forecasting of invasive species distributions and of the biogeographical changes they cause.
The monitoring, mapping and forecasting of changes in the distribution of species and ecosystems driven by human activity and climate change.
The development and application of iterative, near-term, forecasts and monitoring of biological and ecological phenomena.
Our group is mainly based at the University of Lisbon, and comprises multiple scientific backgrounds, including biogeography, biology, ecology, physical geography, machine learning, geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing. While our team is more question driven than organism driven, some species groups and ecosystems often receive greater attention, including terrestrial vertebrates, freshwater decapods, mosquitoes and macrofungi. On the ecosystems side, we are currently developing specific work on wetlands, particularly peatlands.
We are always looking forward to expanding our team, so if you think you would like to collaborate with us in these or related topics, do not hesitate to drop us a line to the emails in the contact page.
