Cristina Branquinho is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and a researcher at the Centre of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes. She has been working in the Ecology of environmental changes. Her research focuses on understanding ecological patterns at the ecosystem level in response to environmental changes, and is currently driven by three overarching objectives: i) Understand the structure and functioning of dryland ecosystems (including agroecosystems and agroforestry ecosystems) under environmental change scenarios (eutrophication, climate change and pollution); ii) Develop, test, model and track early warning ecological indicators of environmental change factors at a global scale, as well as, ecotechnological solutions for restoring ecosystem structure and functioning; iii) Understand what is the role of urban green areas and of its biodiversity in ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services.

She is also interested in studying early warning indicators of climate change and of desertification especially in the south of Portugal. More recently she is interested in further apply this methodology in other areas of the world especially Africa and South America. For that, she intends to use the changes in ecological indicators of the structure and functioning of ecosystems as a result of global changes, climate change, nitrogen, metal and organic pollution.

She is experienced in monitoring the impact of pollution or anthropogenic activities, such as mines, quarries, industrial, rural and urban areas on different environmental matrixes: air, soil, water, plants and also at the ecosystem level. Part of the work has been based on the use of biological organisms as indicators of environmental quality. She has also developed methodologies for measuring PAHs and heavy metal contamination in stream water using transplanted aquatic mosses. With the previous information she has been building spatial (local or regional) and temporal geostatistical models with potential use for decision making. She has also been applying the previous knowledge to Environmental Health studies, in particular developing environmental biomonitoring to assess human exposure to toxic pollutants mainly, heavy metals, dioxins, furans and PAHs, and relating several environmental bioindicators and/or biomonitors of pollution and of land-uses changes with public health indicators in order to develop efficient tools for evaluation of the human health risk assessment, especially with long-term chronic effects on health. This allows the production of high-resolution data on environmental exposure for developing reliable environmental health risk assessment studies.

Part of her research is also been developed using the knowledge and the scientific principles of structure and functioning of ecosystems to undergo ecological management and define sustainable strategies for the ecological restoration of degraded ecosystems. Namely, proposing managing options and scenarios including the strategy of ecological restoration in particular in Mediterranean streams, metal mines, quarries, heavy industries natural forests and sand beach dunes. In particular, she is using Biological Soil Crusts for the restoration of margins of dams and desertified areas. Recently she has been involved in the production of Biological Soil Crusts for green roofs in order to avoid watering in Mediterranean areas.