Rate My Professor João Marcos Villela

João Marcos Villela is a postdoctoral researcher at the Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ) of the Universidade de São Paulo, affiliated with the Department of Soil Science. His work centers on soil erosion processes, sediment yield estimation, and soil carbon dynamics in agricultural systems. Villela completed graduate studies at the Universidade de São Paulo, including research on sediment production related to land use and cover changes as well as the development of water erosion tracers using rare earth elements.

Key contributions include co-authorship on studies evaluating laser diffraction methods for suspended sediment measurement, estimation of sediment production in oil palm expansion areas, and performance evaluation of erosion tracers through plot-scale experiments and modeling. In 2026, he served as first author of the paper “Soil carbon debt from land use change in Brazil,” published in Nature Communications, which quantifies carbon losses associated with historical land use changes across Brazilian soils. Additional publications address carbon farming in the Americas and soil carbon storage in Brazilian drylands. Villela’s research has been supported by FAPESP and involves collaboration with institutions including Embrapa.