Welcome to
legaci lab
Landscape evolution, geomorphology, tectonics, biodiversity, applied cosmogenic isotopes
Looking for undergraduate or graduate research opportunities?
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Quantitative geomorphology camp
Are you an advanced undergraduate student, graduate student, or postdoc? Are you interested in Quantitative Geomorphology? This opportunity may be just what you need! Applicants must be enrolled and/or employed in a degree-granting institution in the United States.​​
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Applications for the 2025 Quantitative Geomorphology Camp are now open!
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Go to the dedicated Website for more information.​
ABOUT ME
When asked about the geologic past, many of us, if not most, will think of fossils and rocks. Instead, I think about landscapes as windows to the geologic past. I am a geologist from the Amazon region in Brazil and I investigate the processes that shape the awe-inspiring landscapes around the world, how they evolve through time, and what mechanisms control their evolution.
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I was born and raised in Manaus, a 2+ million people city in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. As a native of the Amazon region, one of my career goals is to contribute to the fundamental understanding of the formation and evolution of its landscapes. I believe that understanding how the Amazon system fundamentally evolves can help us protect it.
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I also actively look for ways to contribute to decreasing the underrepresentation of ethnic and gender groups in the Geosciences. The DELTA H initiative is one of these efforts.
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I welcome people from all backgrounds, ethnicity, nationality, including but not limited to BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, women, people with disabilities, to come work with me. My group maintains a safe environment where all are free to talk about their barriers and difficulties specific to their backgrounds. We also discuss how to improve and balance our community in the Geosciences.
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Visit the links below to learn more about me, my group, and my work. If you are interested, don't hesitate to reach out.
research
• How tectonics and climate compete to control the shapes, heights, and masses of mountain ranges?
• Why are landscapes in continent interiors so geomorphically active even when there is no external perturbation mechanism such as tectonics, dynamic topography, or changes in climate?
• Why are the same geomorphically active (but tectonically inactive) landscapes so biodiverse?
• What are the rates and the impacts of soil erosion in the degradation of the Amazon rainforest?
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I investigate the interactions between rock type, tectonic, climatic, and surface processes and their individual contributions to the evolution of mountain ranges and continent interiors. The landscapes I study work as ideal natural laboratories to dive into the physical processes that shape the Earth's topography. I then combine these observations with numerical models - where all boundary conditions are known and prescribed - to understand more about the underlying processes controlling those landscapes.
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Landscapes also form the dynamic tapestry over which the biosphere evolves and I investigate how landscape dynamics influence the generation, maintenance, and extinction of Amazonia's unparalleled biodiversity.
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Currently, my work is focused on the Andes mountains, the Amazon lowlands, and the Paraná basin.
The
DELTA H Initiative
Representation of Brazilians and South Americans in the international geoscientific community is poor, even more so in the Geomorphology community. To improve this scenario and to build a diverse Landscape Evolution community in Brazil, I created and now coordinate the DELTA H initiative alongside colleagues and co-leaders Daniel Peifer and Nelson Fernandes and co-organizers Marcilene dos Santos and Fabiano Pupim (see deltahbrasil.com).
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Through DELTA H, we are working on building a more representative community and a safe environment for interactions between undergraduates, graduates, and leading scientists in the international field of Landscape Evolution and Geomorphology.