Francisco Moreira
Principal Researcher
I have a PhD degree in Biology (University of Lisbon, 1996). During the first stages of my academic career, I carried out ecological studies on marine and estuarine fish (food, growth and breeding ecology). My PhD was on wetland bird ecology, namely the role of waders and gulls on energy fluxes on a southern European estuarine food web. My current research interests include 3 major topics:
(i) links between farmland and forest management and biodiversity: I am interested on predicting how policy changes affect the management of agricultural and forest ecosystems (from field to landscape levels), and how this is reflected on biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services. Within this topic, I have been focusing on grassland birds as biodiversity indicators;
(ii) fire ecology: the research focus is evaluating the impacts of wildfire on plants (cork oak in particular) and landscapes, as well as on the effectiveness of different post-fire ecosystem restoration approaches.
(iii) biodiversity impacts of anthropogenic linear infrastructures: focus is on power lines, and how they impact, through disturbance, collision and electrocution, bird population dynamics.
I am the principal investigator of the InBIO research group "Biodiversity in Agricultural and Forest Ecosystems”. I am also the chair holder of the REN Invited Research Chair in Biodiversity.