Julia Valentim Tavares

Profile

Julia Valentim Tavares is a tropical forest ecologist, Lectture in Ecology, Global Change and Sustainability at the University of Leeds, and a National Geographic Explorer. She is a NERC Independent Research Fellow leading WET-RISK, a basin-wide research programme investigating how Amazonian wetland forests respond to extreme climatic events and what these responses mean for ecosystem resilience, biodiversity and the future of the Amazon.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Julia has devoted more than 15 years to understanding tropical forests, with the Amazon at the centre of her research and personal connection. She holds a BSc in Biology and a teaching qualification from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ, 2006-2010), an MSc in Ecology from the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA, 2011-2013), and a PhD in Ecology and Global Change from the University of Leeds (2015-2019). Her academic career has also included a post-doctoral and an independent research positions in Sweden (2022-2026), where she worked on tropical forest ecology and plant functional traits at Uppsala University. Her contribution to international science was recognized with an award from the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf Foundation.

Julia's research addresses one of the defining challenges of our time: understanding how tropical forests respond to accelerating climate change. She combines plant ecophysiology, functional ecology, forest dynamics, tree hydraulics, remote sensing and innovative technologies to investigate how drought, flooding and extreme climatic events shape the functioning and resilience of tropical forests. Her work spans the Amazon basin, from terrestrial forests to seasonally flooded várzea and black-water igapó ecosystems, and emphasises the extraordinary ecological diversity of what is often described simply as “the Amazon”.

She has led and contributed to international, basin-scale collaborations involving hundreds of trees, dozens of species and research sites across Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. Her work on the hydraulic vulnerability of Amazonian trees has contributed new insights into drought-induced mortality, carbon storage and species distributions, with research published in leading international journals including Nature. She is also an Associate Researcher at the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, where she develops research and knowledge-exchange initiatives in Amazonian wetlands.

Beyond academia, Julia is committed to making science accessible and meaningful to wider society. Her work has been supported by the UK research and Inovation (UKRI), the National Geographic Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and other international organisations. Through research, field expeditions, teaching and public engagement, she seeks to build bridges between scientific knowledge, local communities and decision-makers, and to strengthen global recognition of the Amazon as a diverse, living system whose future matters far beyond its borders.

Professional memberships

• National Geographic Society
• Royal Geographic Society
• British Ecological Society
• American Geophysical Union
• European Geosciences Union
• Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation