Dr Erika Berenguer
About
Erika Berenguer is a Senior Research Associate at the Ecosystems Lab in the University of Oxford and a Visiting Research Associate at Lancaster University. She works in several Brazil-UK consortiums looking at the impacts of human-induced disturbance, such as selective logging and understory fires, in ecosystems functions and processes in the Amazon.
Dr Berenguer co-leads Working Group7 on the Scientific Panel for the Amazon, focusing on the impacts of deforestation and the degradation of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Her interests lie in developing a better understanding of how human-modified tropical forests function, assessing the resilience of these forests in the face of climate change. In addition, she is passionate about finding ways of effectively communicating scientific results to relevant stakeholders and policy makers.
Expertise
- Amazon deforestation
- Amazon fires
- Amazon and climate change
- Amazon and carbon stocks
- Logging in the Amazon
- Resilience of the Amazon to human impacts
- Amazon rainforest
Selected publications
- Assessing invertebrate herbivory in human-modified tropical forest canopies (2021)
- Improving the spatial-temporal analysis of Amazonian fires (2020)
- A large-scale assessment of plant dispersal mode and seed traits across human-modified Amazonian forests (2020)
- Clarifying Amazonia’s burning crisis (2019)
- Seeing the woods through the saplings: Using wood density to assess the recovery of human-modified Amazonian forests (2018)
- Tree growth and stem carbon accumulation in human-modified Amazonian forests following drought and fire (2018)
- Quantifying immediate carbon emissions from El Niño-mediated wildfires in humid tropical forests (2018)
- A large-scale field assessment of carbon stocks in human-modified tropical forests (2014)
Media experience
Over the past seven years, Dr Erika Berenguer has had vast experience with both Brazilian and British media discussing various issues related to the Amazon, especially deforestation and fires. This resulted in a trip with the BBC to the Amazon for BBC News at Ten, a live interview on BBC Newsnight, several podcasts with the BBC and Sky News, and numerous written interviews, from The Guardian to the Express.
Recent media work
- How fires have spread to previously untouched parts of the world (The Guardian, 2021)
- 'Accustomed to barbarism': Oxford researcher warns of risk of fire normalization in the Amazon (BBC Brasil, 2020)
- Interview on BBC Newsnight (2019)
- Amazon rainforest: 'Once it's gone, it's gone forever' - special report on BBC News at Ten (2019)
- Record Amazon rainforest fires spark row between Brazil and France (New Scientist, 2019)
- ClimateCast – Sky News (podcast)
- 'Invisible' fire consumes Amazon for up to 30 years, says study (O Globo Newspaper)
- Carbon loss from tropical forests 'underestimated' (BBC News, 2014)
Languages
English, Portuguese