Viviana Ceccarelli
- Email: gyvc@leeds.ac.uk
- Thesis title: Success and Vulnerability of South America’s Tropical Forests
- Supervisors: Professor Oliver Phillips FRS, Prof Tim Baker
Profile
I am a PhD student at the Ecology and Global Change group at the University of Leeds and I am funded by the NERC Panorama DTP. My PhD project aims to investigate the factors driving the ecological success and dominance of tree species in the Amazon and South American tropical forests, and understand how species’ vulnerability to climate and global change is potentially driving shifts in forest floristic and functional composition. The project will use data from single- and multi-census plots from the ForestPlots network and will integrate different ecological, biogeographical and phylogenetic analyses.
Prior to my PhD at the University of Leeds, I graduated with a MSc in Plant Sciences from Wageningen University and I worked for three years as a Research Fellow at CGIAR-Bioversity International focusing on species distribution and climate change modelling to support adaptation to climate change and forest restoration and conservation in Latin America and Central Africa.
Research interests
- Tropical ecology
- Amazon forests
- Climate and global change
- Forest conservation
- Ecological modelling
Qualifications
- MSc Plant Sciences, Wageningen University & Research
- BSc Honours Agricultural Sciences and Plant Biotechnology, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies
- BSc Agricultural Sciences, University of Pisa