Danijela’s research and professional work focus on forests in settled and urban landscapes. Her work and research are aimed at providing real-world solutions and tools that support strategic conservation, restoration and integrated spatial planning of green systems, vegetation, and forests in urban, peri-urban, ex-urban, and rural/agricultural landscapes and their interfaces. Some of her research themes are:

• Conservation and restoration of urban and peri-urban landscapes, vegetation, forests, and trees.
• Multipurpose vegetation and forest inventory and monitoring; development of monitoring criteria and indicators to support and inform evidence-based management and decision making.
• Modelling and mapping urban and peri-urban forest structure, composition, and their vulnerabilities to climate change, invasive species impacts, land development and other anthropogenic factors.
• Predictive modelling and mapping of vegetation, forests and species distributions under current, historical (pre-settlement vegetation), and future climates and environmental conditions.
• Spatial quantification, and predictive modelling of forest biomass, carbon, and other ecological goods and services.
• Integrated forest and landscape conservation, restoration, and planning.
• Spatial planning and ecological design of multi-functional green systems.
• Application of geoinformatics, spatial, and remotely sensed information to forest conservation and landscape planning.
• Citizen-science-based forest inventory and monitoring; knowledge transfer and community engagement in urban forest stewardship.
• In collaboration with Dr. A. Kenney, Danijela co-developed Neighbourwoods@, a tree inventory and monitoring protocol; and Vegetation Sampling Protocol, inventory and monitoring protocol applicable to forests and other vegetation.

Danijela collaborates with partners from different levels of governments, NGOs, academia, community groups, and other groups engaged in forest conservation and restoration across urban and settled landscapes.