LEEC

Conservation of forests and natural resources is clearly an important issue in a populated world. Landscape ecology brings comprehensive tools to understand complexity of ecosystems. We live in the anthropocene, and solutions are needed to maintain ecosystem functions and ultimately human well-being in face of alarming global changes. How to conserve landscapes living in a threshold moment? We make research efforts paired with applied ecology demanded by decision makers in order to advance knowledge and to understand patterns and processes in landscape ecology and biodiversity conservation.

Here we are interested in the role of landscape structure in restoration processes, both as the landscape itself directly affects the restoration (e.g. distance between fragments and the type of matrix), as well as its importance to key organisms for restoration as plants, birds and ants.

We are interested in evaluating the role of landscapes on structuring genetic diversity and connectivity. Specifically, we are engaged with understanding how the landscape structure affects ecological processes, such as dispersal, and how it would influence the movement of genes within and between populations.

What is the biodiversity pattern in urban areas? How does the structure of urban landscape affect urban areas? What is the importance of the urban landscape for the maintenance of ecosystem services? How can we manage the urban landscape to reduce their impact on native biodiversity and at the same time assist the control of urban pests? These are some questions we are concerned about.

Why and how organisms move? Which biotic and abiotic factors influence their movement? And what are the ecological consequences of their movement? To explore such questions, we use different geotechnologies to monitor movement (VHF and GPS tags, radio data loggers, and harmonic radars), as well as new remote sensing products, landscape analysis, and modern analytical tools (mainly statistical and individual-based models). Our aim is to understand how organism movement is related to ecological processes at the individual, population and community levels, using a landscape approach. We also promote the Movement Ecology Group, a study group focused in the discussion of relevant ecological topics to create a common background on sampling design, modelling, statistical analysis and fieldwork methods for movement ecology studies.

More information: facebook/movementecology

Road Ecology has emerged as a transdisciplinary field of applied research in response to continuous increase in transportation infrastructure worldwide. Road network connects cities and villages, agricultural and natural areas and influence the landscape in various ways. Roads and traffic alter the environment polluting air and water and affecting not only wildlife communities but also human well-being. Road ecology addresses human security and animal road kill mitigation, while maintaining roads functionality. Our research team has adapted habitat suitability models to identify road kill probability along roads in response to landscape attributes. We also investigate how road upgrading may affect the spatial distribution of wildlife road mortality.

This project aims to integrate the knowledge of researchers and students from different areas of UNESP Rio Claro with the demands of the population of the cities of Rio Claro region and related socio-environmental issues. The project intends to work together with the local and regional community identifying key issues and leading discussions in order to find solutions to make decisions and mediate socio-environmental conflicts.

The Puma Corridor project aims to identify areas for the implementation of ecological corridors and restoration in the metropolitan region of Campinas. Ecology data of puma (Puma concolor), a key species that still occurs in the interior of São Paulo, is used for the identification of these priority areas.