Professor Florencia Montagnini

Florencia Montagnini is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment and the Director of the Program in Tropical Forestry and Agroforestry(PTFA) at the Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry. Previously, she was on the faculty of the same school for over twenty years, with a short period of leave to serve in the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center(CATIE), an international institute for agricultural development and biological conservation in Central America and the Caribbean. 

Born and raised in Argentina, she received a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga, USA, her master’s degree from the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC, Caracas, Venezuela), and her undergraduate from the National University of Rosario, Argentina. Before coming to Yale, she completed her postdoctoral training at the Organization for Tropical Studies(OTS)and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center. Throughout her extensive career, she has also worked as an journalist, and as a consultant for a broad variety of institutions and companies.

In addition to her academic career, she has also served as a consultant to the Department of Energy, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAD), the Argentine government, and the Swedish Academy of Science. 

Professor Montagnini’s research and consultant work focus primarily on the sustainability of forests and agroforestry systems, with a special emphasis on Latin America. She is also interested in sustainability, restoration, conservation, rural development, and adaptation and mitigation to climate change. She is currently leading several projects in regions encompassing major types of tropical and subtropical forests in Latin America. In the research for these projects, she is collaborating with universities and other academic, private-sector, and government institutions in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama.

Dr. Montagnini and her students and collaborators worldwide have for years conducted pioneering research and fieldwork in the areas of ecosystem and landscape restoration, reforestation with native species, biodiversity recovery and conservation, conservation of non-timber forest products, traditional and modern agroforestry systems, and organic agroforestry. Some of the most relevant projects in which he research team has participated are the domestication of native tree species in Misiones (Argentina), forest restoration in the Atlantic Forest (Brazil), the implementation of agroforestry systems with non-timber forest products  in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Ecuador), the restoration of areas near the Panama Canal’s watershed (Panama), and experiments to promote organic coffee agroforestry in Costa Rica.

Much of Dr. Montagnini’s current work is particularly focused on Brazil, examining the different alternatives for reforesting the highly endangered Atlantic Forest, using different strategies according to the degree of degradation of the landscape. In this project, they are collaborating with the tire manufacturer Michelin in the reforestation of a 10,000 hectares forest reserve in Itubera, Bahia. To do so, they have used old rubber plantations as ‘nurseries’ by enriching the groves with native species. As Professor Montagnini explains, it is often difficult to plant and establish successfully the non-pioneer tree species. These species are shade tolerant, she emphasizes, so planting them in enrichment can be an alternative. In this project, her team is also developing strategies for the restoration of native secondary forests and abandoned pastures with mixed plantations of native species.

This project is part of a larger effort undertaken by Professor Montagnini to fight the deforestation of the Atlantic Forest. For decades their research agenda has focused on finding solutions to the pressing challenge of restoring degraded lands in Latin America, which has become urgent after the rampant deforestation that began in the mid-1980s and continue to this day. This also explains their academic interest in Brazil: as the largest country of Latin America, it holds the greatest portion of the Amazon and also the Atlantic forest. This abuse has led to the situation that only 7% of the original Atlantic forest cover is left, as she points out when addressing this problem.  

Dr. Montagnini’s work in Brazil dates back to 1990, when the Yale School of the Environment held a memorandum of understanding with the Center for Cacao Promotion and Research(CEPLAC). The initial goal of this collaboration was to research on the impact of native trees on soil fertility at Pau-Brasil Ecological Station, in Porto Seguro, Bahia. However, this initial research projectled to extensive collaboration between Professor Montagnini with various academic, private-sector, and government institutions. 

In the course of developing this commitment to fight for reforestation assumed by the PTFA and several Brazilian institutions, Professor Montagnini has collaborated with many other faculty members and mentored countless graduate students from the Yale School of the Environment. Two of her most committed and long-time collaborators in this fight have been professors Mark Ashtonand Chadwick Oliver, with whom she recently co-authored a paperon seed rain in the Atlantic forest of southern Bahia (Brazil).

One alumnus that has remained very active in collaborating with the Program is Daniel Piotto, who was supervised by Professor Montagnini during his Ph.D. at Yale and is now a professor at the Federal University of Southern Bahia. Among the recent outstanding academic production of the PTFA on Brazil, it is worth mentioning Leonora Pepper’s book chapteron the role of açai’s small-scale farming in the global market and Chris Martin’s paperon impact investing in Acre’s tropical forests.

The author of eleven books and overtwo hundred scientific articles, Professor Montagnini holds honorary professorships at several universities in Latin America. She was also elected a Senior Fellow to the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas Program (U.S. Department of State) in 2011 and named Guest of Honor of the National University of Rosario in 1993.