Johanna San Pedro

Biography

Johanna San Pedro is a researcher in the IIASA Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program. She specializes in wildfire modeling, climate-fire interactions, and forest ecosystem dynamics, with applications in the boreal region, Europe, and Latin America.

San Pedro is a core contributor to the development and application of the Wildfire Climate Impacts and Adaptation Model (FLAM) working alongside the FLAM team to expand its use in global, regional, and country specific assessments. She has been involved in multiple wildfire-related modeling initiatives at IIASA, spanning data integration, climate-scenario analysis, and cross-program knowledge exchange.

She is the principal investigator of the Fire&Ice project (2024-2027), which aims to strengthen inter-program collaboration within IIASA and across its external network to advance understanding of wildfire phenomena in the boreal zone. The project focuses on reconstructing past fire activity, projecting future fire regimes under climate change, improving the representation of demographic indicators, and assessing health impacts arising from biomass-burning emissions. In this role, she leads scientific coordination, stakeholder engagement, and bilateral collaborations with national agencies and research partners across the boreal region.

Before joining IIASA, San Pedro spent nearly a decade working in forest management, environmental policy, and natural resource governance in the Philippines, where she supported large-scale forest restoration programs, community forestry initiatives, and capacity-building efforts in GIS and spatial analysis.

Her research interests include wildfire risk assessment, climate impacts, ecosystem services, sustainable forest management, and human-environment interactions. She holds dual master’s degrees in European forestry (University of Eastern Finland) and spatial and ecological modeling (University of Lleida).

Last update: 03 DEC 2025