Office hours
Term 1 (2024-25) Mondays 14:00 to 15:00 and Wednesdays 13:00-14:00
Please email me to book an student office hour appointment and indicate if you want to meet in my office or online. You will receive an outlook calendar event invitation with a Teams link if needed.
My pronouns are she / her / ella. You can hear my name pronunciation here.
Dunia H. Urrego (she / her / ella)
Associate Professor
Physical Geography
University of Exeter
Laver Building
North Park Road
Exeter EX4 4QE
My research focuses on the response of biodiversity to environmental change, human-landscape interactions and understanding climate change. As such I work at the interface between the biosphere, human and social systems, and the climate system. I currently lead a group of researchers investigating ecological consequences of megafaunal extinctions, resilience and ecological baselines, the tropical signal of abrupt climate events, and mangrove forest development and carbon sequestration. My early research has highlighted the resilience of Amazonian forests to temperature change and sensitivity to drought, that natural fires and drought drive treeline dynamics in the tropical Andes and that climate change can halt coral reef development in the eastern tropical Pacific. I have worked on understanding how environmental change influenced the development of modern humans in southern Africa and produced the first formal assessment of climate change communication in Colombia. I lead the international network LaACER on abrupt climate change and environmental responses in the American tropics (http://ephe-paleoclimat.com/acer/LaACER.htm).
Google scholar profile: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=GJ0yDhsAAAAJ
Qualifications:
PhD in Biological Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology, United States
BEng in Forest engineering, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia
Career:
2023-present Associate Professor in Biodiversity and Climate Change, University of Exeter, UK.
2018-2023 Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, University of Exeter, UK.
2017-2019 Visiting scientist, Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, Netherlands.
2013-2018 Lecturer in Physical Geography, University of Exeter, UK.
2010-2013 Postdoctoral researcher ERC-CNRS, Université Bordeaux, France.
2009-2010 Adjunct professor, Department of Biology, Florida Institute of Technology, USA.
2006-2010 Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Biology, Florida Institute of Technology, USA
