Professional summary
Maria is a researcher focused on understanding how land-use and land-cover change and climate variability, influence fire dynamics, particularly in tropical landscapes. She holds a degree in Forestry and an MSc in Environmental and Forest Sciences from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. During her PhD in Remote Sensing at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), she developed FLAME, a burned-area model designed to analyse the spatial influence of multiple drivers on wildfires and to quantify the uncertainties associated with these analyses.
Maria is part of the Science Team for the State of Wildfires Project, which provides scientific evidence on the drivers, impacts, and projected changes of extreme wildfires worldwide, supporting fire management and policy development. More recently, through the BASE Project, she has collaborated closely with local Brazilian communities to learn from their traditional fire knowledge and to develop methodologies that integrate this knowledge into fire modelling approaches.
She works with partners around the world to advance nature conservation, fire modelling, and climate change adaptation. In addition to her research, Maria serves as the Administrative Director of Ressuscita São Gonçalo, a youth-led Brazilian NGO dedicated to community empowerment and climate justice.