
\chapter*{Acknowledgements}
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First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Imma Oliveras Menor. Imma, thank you so much for being so enthusiastic about this thesis from the very first email I sent you back in 2018. I am immensely grateful for your guidance throughout these years, and for the positivity you have always shown towards my work. Thank you for giving me the freedom to explore ideas and for all the opportunities that you have offered me. I am particularly thankful for your support through personal difficulties and during Covid-19. The Oxford-Montpellier supervision was never a problem, instead you managed to make it a great opportunity for me to grow as a scientist. \textit{Moltes gràcies!!} 

Special thanks to Ane Alencar, Vera L. S. Arruda, Wallace Silva, Dhemerson Conciani and the rest of the science team at the Insituto de Pesquisa Amazônica for welcoming me to Brasília and for showing me the Chapada dos Veadeiros, where I met the Cerrado and its fires. I am also immensely grateful to David Bauman, thank you for generously offering your time and for encouraging me to take the statistical analyses of this thesis a few steps further, they certainly enriched this thesis. Finally, I would also like to thank my collaborators, Matthew Jones, Sander Veraverbeke and Renata Libonati, for readily sharing the data that enabled the last chapter of this thesis. And, along with them, Thomas Janssen, Guilherme Mataveli and Lucas Menezes, thank you all for your keen interest in the project and all the useful insights you provided.

It has been an immense pleasure to be part of the DISturbance eCOlogy (DISCOLab) research group, such an encouraging environment to share experiences and develop academically. To Manoela Machado, Paco Navarro-Rosales, Gian Luca Spadoni, and Tash Lutz, thank you so much for your support, advice, friendship and all the fun. During these years, I have always enjoyed my visits to the AMAP research group in Montpellier, where I was warmly welcomed and always had a really attentive audience. And special thanks to Prof. Maria Antonia Carniello, Wesley Jonatar, Janeide and all the field assistants for guiding me on my first fieldtrip to Serra das Araras and generously sharing their love for, and knowledge about, the Cerrado.

I am immensely grateful to have been a member of the Oxford Ecosystems Lab, a vibrant community of scientists from whom I have learned a great deal and with whom I have so enjoyed my time at Oxford. To Yadvinder Malhi, for welcoming me to his research group, I never felt like I was missing a scientific community during Covid-19 or when my supervisor moved to a new position, and I am really grateful. I would like to thank Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Nikki Stevens, Erika Berenguer, Felipe Martello, Milton Barbosa, Eleanor Thomson and Sruthi Krishna Moorthy for sharing with me their advice and experience to navigate the academic world. To my fellow PhD students, Renata Maia, Kendall Jefferys, Jed Soleiman, Xiongjie Deng, and Kerry-Anne Grey, it's been great to have such friendly and kind company in our gloomy mezzanine. Finally, special thanks to my dear 'during-covid' PhD friends, Tina Christmann, Trisha Gopalakrishna, Laura Picot, and Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng. It was marvelous to have such a supportive group to lean on. It's been wonderful to see you all get through to the end of your PhDs and then embarking in new exciting projects. Way to go!


To all my friends and colleagues at the Environmental Change Institute, I do cherish all the good moments and the affection you showed me during the last months of this thesis. Special thanks to Fred Thomas, acting rubber duck debugger, for his advice to speed up my code and showing me the \textit{parquet} file format, it revolutionised the timings of this thesis.


Among other things, this thesis has been a journey out of depression. A heck of a journey of there and back again. This journey, and therefore this thesis, would not have been possible without my various families and a good bunch of good friends. The \textit{tortuga} people, Blas, Leo, Rodri and Santi. You rescued me from my sinking ship offering a sweet and caring friendship filled with fun programming sessions, quesadillas, facturitas, mezcal and tequila, \textit{muchas gracias chachos}. To the inhabitants of 11 Leander Way through the ages, Sofia, Manu, Isma, Giulia, Claire, Paola and Sapphô the Parisian cat. Your many creative talents and hobbies have made this journey more enjoyable and fun. Thank you so much for putting up with me, cheering me up, celebrating, dancing and eating. Joris, I am so lucky we met again in Oxford, that I could enjoy your friendship and we could drown our sorrows in tea. To Fabián, you were there during the toughest moments, lovingly holding my hand tight. For this and for all the fun and love, for all the things I learnt with you, I am forever grateful. Thank you to my dear friends in Oxford, Rocey, Fernando, Emilia, Rolland, Mark, Michael, Catherine... and the ones in London, Edgar, Vicky, Sergio, Sofia, Magda, Elena, Zahra, Jazmín - and so many others. In the blink of an eye it seems, but the journeys we've all been through!! My friends in Barcelona, thanks for hanging on there with me. I'm coming back, can't wait to see you more often.

Finally, huge thanks to my parents, for you have always supported me, even when you were puzzled by my choices and did not fully understand what all the fuss was about. To you and to all my family, thank you so much for all your love and encouragement, for always being there. To Guille and Lucas, can't wait to have you so close again and go see you play hockey.

Special thanks to my psychologist, thank you for giving me your hand softly and firmly at the same time. It has been wonderful to have your guiding advice and active listening, and I have learned so much. \textit{Gràcies!} 

Last but not least, this thesis was written in Python and R, using QGIS and Inkscape, and abusing Stack Exchange and others. All of the data used in this thesis was open to the public, or will be made open to the public as much as it is possible. I owe a great deal to open data and open software. Many thanks to the community of people around the world who put their time and effort in developing and improving resources and the programming skills of others without necessarily being economically rewarded - you are a stepping stone of Science.

\section*{Funding acknowledgements}

This thesis would not have been possible without the financial support from the Environmental Research DTP (award NE/S007474/1) and the UK Natural Environment Research Council. I would also like to thank the Environmental Change Institute and St Catherine's College for funding part of my attendance to conferences and workshops. Finally, I would like to thank St Catherine's College and the Leatherseller's Company for partially funding three of my years at the University of Oxford.



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