João Carreiras 

: what I do ...

Since May 2024, I have been working as a Data Scientist on behalf of VASS at the Joint Research Centre (Ispra, Italy) of the European Commission, developing remote sensing-based methods to detect forest degradation in the Amazon basin.

I have been a visiting scientist at the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, UK, since April 2023. 

Between June 2014 and March 2023, I worked as a Research Associate at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield. I was funded by National Environmental Research Council's (NERC) support of the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO). My main activity was to contribute to the preparatory science programme of the European Space Agency BIOMASS mission: using multiple satellite observations for mapping and quantifying the status and changes of tropical forests. Also, in the scope of the SECO project, I've contributed to generating the first-ever estimates of key carbon fluxes across the global dry tropics using a combination of high-quality in situ observations, remote sensing data and carbon balance modelling.

I completed a 5-year college degree and a PhD degree in Forestry from the School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, in 1993 and 2005, respectively, with a PhD thesis entitled “Evaluation of Land Cover Changes in the Amazon Basin using Remote Sensing Data”. Between 2007 and 2014 I worked as a Research Fellow at the Tropical Research Institute (Portugal).

My main area of scientific activity is related to the use of remote sensing data for mapping and quantifying the status and changes in the biophysical parameters and land use/land cover types in tropical forests in relation to anthropogenic and climate change.