Patrícia is an Environmental Engineer specializing in fire–climate dynamics in tropical ecosystems. Her research focuses on the interplay of fire, climate, vegetation, and human activities in tropical ecosystems, and she's particularly interested in the impacts of climate change on contemporary and future fire regimes. At Yale, her research focuses on identifying the climatic conditions that lead to extreme, catastrophic fires, and mapping ecosystem vulnerability. She combines remote sensing, observational datasets, and climate models to quantify how fire regimes have changed in recent decades and to assess how they may evolve under future climate scenarios. She also contributes to projects on extreme climate events (heatwaves and drought), climate modeling, and integrated fire management across South America.
Education
Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences and Geoinformation, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Ph.D. in Meteorology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
M.Sc. and B.S. in Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Lisbon, Portugal