Dr Luiz Aragao

About me:

My main research focus is to examine the remote sensing of tropical forest disturbances: such as deforestation, drought and fires, and on-the-ground quantification of carbon stocks and fluxes in tropical forests, specifically in Amazonia, to understand the impacts of human pressures and climate change in this ecosystem.

I was granted a Research Fellowship by NERC in 2008 to study the carbon cycling of fire-affected forests in Amazonia, bridging remote sensing analysis and field-based surveys in Amazonia (Read more about my NERC fellowship research). I formerly completed my PhD degree from Brazilian Institute of Space Research in 2004 and worked as a Posdoctoral Research Associated at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, before moving to Exeter.

My research has include a number of fieldwork campaigns in tropical forests, integration of field-based ecological data, satellite remote-sensing and ecological modelling for the understanding of spatial and temporal patterns of carbon dynamics and nutrient cycling in Amazonia and Atlantic forests, from local to regional scales.

• Amazonia
• Remote Sensing
• Forest Ecology
• Land use change
• carbon dynamics

I am mainly interested in tropical ecosystems ecology, carbon dynamics and nutrient cycling, remote sensing of land use change and disturbances (Fires) and the interactions between human, climate and forest functioning.

I have worked in Amazonia over 8 years being evolved in several projects including the evaluation of the impacts of fire events in Roraima-Brazil in 1998, the LBA Project: Amazonia's Large Scale Atmosphere-Biosphere Experiment, since 2000, I recently joined the RAINFOR – Amazon Forest Inventory Network - project, been involved in four major projects:

1. PAN-AMAZONIA – Project for the Advancement of Networked Science in Amazonia, between 2004 and 2006
2. Examining the impacts of recent drought in Amazonia in 2006
3. Why do different Amazonian forests grow at different rates?
4. Mapping and quantifying post-fire carbon budget in Amazonia

My major contribution has been to show how the high landscape variability, including land cover, land use and topography affect the spatial patterns of the canopy structure and functioning. More recently, I have shown the effects of soil fertility in the patterns of carbon allocation in forest ecosystems across the Amazon. Finally, I have generated the first basin-wide map of the 2005 Amazonian drought and showed how it impacted fire patterns in this region.

PhD in Remote Sensing
MSc in Environmental Sciences
BSc Ecology