ICETA is a private, non-profit research organization. It is the management institution of InBIO, the most recent Portuguese Associate Laboratory. InBIO - Research Network in Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology - is an Associate Laboratory established in 2011 by a partnership between the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources (CIBIO) and the Centre of Applied Ecology ‘Prof. Baeta Neves’ from University of Lisbon (CEABN). The mission of InBIO is to develop top-level research on biodiversity related fields through its twenty research groups distributed across Portugal and recently Angola. InBIO is fully equipped with state-of-the-art ecology and molecular biology laboratories, including a next-gen sequencing platform and computational facilities dedicated to Ecosystems-Earth observations coupling and modeling. It provides many services to community, namely through the Centre for Molecular Analysis (CTM), dedicated to applied research in the evaluation and use of genetic resources; the Centre for Studies and Projects in Applied Ecology (GEPE), for environmental impact studies and environmental planning; and the Business & Biodiversity initiative. Financed by Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) and private companies, InBIO presents adequate human resources, equipment and facilities to become an international recognized research institution and to face jointly with EU partners the major biodiversity related challenges. Disseminating and promoting scientific culture are also key topics for InBIO.
Principal Investigator:
João Pradinho Honrado is a faculty member at the University of Porto and senior researcher at ICETA-INBIO, where he leads the Predictive Ecology (PRECOL) group. His research focuses on the application of principles and methods of vegetation and landscape ecology to the assessment of ecosystem services and to biodiversity conservation and monitoring across scales. He coordinated several national research projects on indicators and methods for biodiversity and habitat monitoring. He also coordinated the participation of ICETA-INBIO in the FP7 project BIO_SOS (FP7 - SPACE-2010-1-263435), where he led WP5 on data acquisition and quality management. He currently coordinates a national research project aimed at integrating ecosystem services into regional and local governance.
He participates in WP5, WP6, WP7, WP9 and WP12 of Ecopotential.