Dr. Norton Ribeiro de Freitas Jr., an Economist of the State Government of São Paulo Environmental Sanitation and Technology Company in Brazil, joined the Gund Institute in January 2011 to pursue interdisciplinary work at the University of Vermont, focused on globally significant issues in Ecological Economics. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher in the Center of Nuclear Energy in Agriculture, CENA, and is on leave from his position as a Research Scientist in Modeling Terrestrial Ecosystem Structure and Function, at the Ecology Cluster of the Botanic Institute of the Secretariat of Environment. He also works on Re-establishing Functional Riparian Zones, Integrating Payments for Ecosystem Services with Agroecological Production Conserving Biodiversity in Economic Frontier Areas of the Atlantic Rainforest, the influence of humans on biospheric processes, land use alterations, and consequences of these alterations into the future.

Research Interests: Indicators of Ecological Change, with a particular emphasis on the Characteristics of Ecosystem Services provided by the Forests