Juan Pablo Benavides Tocarruncho

I am a biologist with an ecology and data science background. I am passionate about tropical ecosystems and the plants that sustain processes at species, community, and ecosystem levels. My work focuses on arid ecosystems, such as dry forests and savannas, looking at the underground functioning of plants in relation to ecological restoration, forest demography and savanna fire dynamics. I am interested in ecosystem modelling. I developed an agent-based model for a high Andean forest to understand resilience to different disturbances. I began a PhD on contrasting drought and fire strategies across tropical African and Latin American savannas, focusing on hydraulic traits and the underground effects of different communities to drought and fire.