Publicações

The susceptibility to climate change concerns the coffee market worldwide due to possible severe productivity losses. Brazil is the world’s largest Arabica coffee producer and has crops in regions considered persistent climate change hotspots. Our study analyzed risks, vulnerabilities, and susceptibilities to pests and diseases in these regions under current and future climates and outlined adaptive measures to reduce future vulnerabilities. Ten risk indicators based on Arabica coffee requirements were proposed: water supply (Iw), base (TIB) and maximum temperature stresses (TImax), which delimit the temperature range where Arabica coffee grows and productivity is penalized outside both ranges, frost stress (TIfrost), diseases such as rust (DIrust), brown eye spot (DIbrown), and Phoma leaf spot (DIphoma), pests such as coffee berry borer (PIberry), coffee leaf miner (PIminer), and yield loss due to water stress (Iyg). Daily near-surface air temperature (minimum, mean, and maximum), relative humidity, precipitation, and global solar radiation were used from 16 General Circulation Models (GCMs) from the NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP), which are derived from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) in three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios (SSP245, SSP370 and SSP585). All risk indicators were calculated for the current climate (19952014) and projected for the near (20412060), intermediate (20612080), and far future (20812100) in three SSPs and then classified into five risk classes (very low, low, moderate, high and very high). Our results indicated that due to increases in TImax and Iyg indicators, with high to very high risk in area and magnitude, Arabica coffee plantations will be negatively affected and economically unfeasible for about 35 % to 75 % of the studied area throughout the 21st century. Furthermore, the rust and the leaf miner will remain a concern in future climates due to increased temperatures and reduced relative humidity. The future of Arabica coffee crops in Brazil will depend on adopting effective adaptive measures and prudent agricultural strategies to address anticipated risks, including shifting crops to higher altitude areas, introducing more climate-resilient coffee cultivars/varieties, using agroforestry or intercropping systems, planting in closer spacing or higher density planting, and employing dripper or partial root-zone irrigation techniques.

The Brazilian Equatorial Shelf (BES) is one among the macrotidal regions worldwide. This study used a high-resolution numerical configuration of the ocean model ROMS (Regional Ocean Modeling System) forced with realistic surface and lateral forcing, as well as with tides and river discharges. Tidal heights of more than 2 m were found in three regions in BES due to the large tidal amplification across the estuarine channels inside each region: Amazon, Pará, and Maranhão, and for a considerable time fraction. Heights between 4 and 5 m occurred with a frequency greater than 20%30% in some regions. All hypothetical barrages proposed in this study were capable of an annual power production, in two-way mode, higher than La Rance (533 GWh year−1, two-way operation, France) and Sihwa (553 GWh year−1, flood-only operation, South Korea), except one with the same production as Sihwa barrage. The installation effort was evaluated using the Gibrat ratio, the ratio between the length of the barrage and its annual energy production. Among the proposed barrages, the most efficient ones have an annual power generation greater than 1500 GWh year−1 and a Gibrat ratios between 1.17 and 3.26, much lower than the Gibrat ratio of Sihwa tidal barrage.

Wildfires are aggravating due to climate change. Public policies need territorial intelligence to prevent and promptly fight fires, especially in vast regions like Brazil. To this end, we have developed a fire-spread prediction system for the Brazilian Cerrado, the biome most affected by wildfires in South America. The system automatically uploads hot pixels and satellite data to calculate maps of fuels loads, vegetation moisture, and probability of burning for simulating fire spread thrice a day for the entire Cerrado at 25 ha and for nine conservation units at 0.04 ha spatial resolution. In both versions, the model attains 6589% of spatial match. Model results together with ancillary data, e.g., historical burned areas and annual CO2 emissions from fires, are available on an interactive web-platform that serves as a tool for fire prevention and fight, particularly in the selected conservation units where the platform is being used for daily operations.

 The Trajetorias dataset is a harmonized set of environmental, epidemiological, and poverty indicators for all municipalities of the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA). This dataset is the result of a scientific synthesis research initiative conducted by scientists from several natural and social sciences fields, consolidating multidisciplinary indicators into a coherent dataset for integrated and interdisciplinary studies of the Brazilian Amazon. The dataset allows the investigation of the association between the Amazonian agrarian systems and their impacts on environmental and epidemiological changes, furthermore enhancing the possibilities for understanding, in a more integrated and consistent way, the scenarios that affect the Amazonian biome and its inhabitants.

Careful management of deforested Amazonian land cannot replace, but must complement, efforts to preserve the rainforest. Sustainable agricultural practices that promote diverse uses can help minimize climate and environmental impacts.

Canopy gaps are evidence of disturbances on forest landscapes. A forest stand is in constant flux, with long stretches of biomass accumulation punctuated by episodic disturbances. We used multitemporal airborne laser scanning data to compare the gap dynamics of four Amazon forest sites. We assessed gap dynamics over 1.93.8 years between 2017 and 2020 at sites in the central, central eastern, southeastern, and northeastern regions of the Brazilian Amazon, over areas ranging from 590 to 1205 ha at each site. Gap size ranged from a minimum of 10 m2 to a maximum of about 10,000 m2. We analyzed four stages of gap dynamics: formation, expansion, persistence, and recovery based on two consecutive airborne laser scanning surveys. The gap fraction at our study sites varied between 1.26% and 7.84%. All the sites have similar proportion of gaps among gap size classes. What notably differed among sites was not the gap size-distribution, but the relative importance of stages of gap dynamics. Expansion and persistence rates ranged from 12 to 118 m2 ha−1. The gap formation rate (formation + expansion) was lower than the recovery rate for three of the four study sites. In contrast, the southeastern site has 1.44 times more area in formation and expansion compared to gap recovery. Over the 24 years interval of our study, no site was close to steady state. Multitemporal analyses of large areas over many years are needed to improve our understanding of tropical forest dynamics.

CLIMAX (Climate Services Through Knowledge Co-Production: A Euro-South American Initiative For Strengthening Societal Adaptation Response to Extreme Events) was an international project funded by FAPESP-Belmont forum developed during the 2016-2021 period. Germany, France, Netherlands, Argentina/France and Brazil were the international partners who worked in common objectives and tasks. The project was composed of four main Work Packages (WP), which interacted to achieve the final goal of developing potential applications to climate services. Here, some of the researches and results conducted by the team in Brazil, aiming at the application by climate services in several sectors, mainly in the energy sector are presented, some including international partners collaborations. The WP0-Co-design and Co-Production of Knowledge, was developed in collaboration with the energy sector, the National Operator of Electric System (ONS). Climate research activities were conducted through interactions between climate researchers, energy sector personnel and social scientists, focusing on applications. WP1-Physical processes explaining climate variability in South America, aimed to study the remote and regional features associated with precipitation extremes over South America, with emphasis on regions where the main hydrographic basins are located. WP2-Predictability and Prediction tools developed several studies, mainly at the sub-seasonal timescale, which was a timescale identified to be useful for ONS. WP3-Social processes explaining climate information appropriation was composed of social scientists and had the mission of producing a characterization of the electric sector. Here, some of the WP1 and WP2 results are summarized, illustrating the potential applications. WP0 and WP3 results are presented in other papers.

Climate change and land-use change can alter the role of natural vegetation as a sink or source of atmospheric carbon. In this work, we evaluate the response of water and carbon fluxes and stocks in Brazilian biomes as a proxy for ecosystem services of regional climate regulation under two contrasting future scenarios: a sustainable development scenario, where some deforested areas are restored by vegetation regrowth combined with a low representative concentration pathway, and a pessimistic scenario, where there is still high deforestation rates and strong climate change. We used refined regional scenarios for land-use change in Brazil, together with climate projections of the HADGEM2-ES model for RCPs 2.6 and 8.5 to drive a land surface model and assess possible future impacts in surface fluxes. Our results show that drying climate and shifts of natural vegetation into anthropogenic land use might shift part of upperstory biomass into understory biomass, which can be more vulnerable to dry events. The simulations also show that climate change appears to drive most of the water balance changes compared to land-use change, especially over the Amazon.

Descrição e Comentários sobre a Legislação em vigor e sua efetivação em relação às políticas públicas, sendo um item dedicado à Regularização Fundiária, o outro aos Desastres Ambientais e Defesa Civil. O estudo de caso será sobre a Braskem e a extração de sal gema em Maceió – AL. Nas considerações finais destaca-se a importância de que haja compatibilidade entre a legislação e as políticas públicas nos temas Regularização Fundiária Urbana, Desastres Ambientais e Mineração.

Measurements of the marine carbonate system on tropical and subtropical continental margins are poorly distributed in space and time, with many uncertainties persisting regarding the role of carbon exchanges at the ocean-atmosphere interface in these areas. To calculate sea-to-air CO2 fluxes in Marine Ecoregions along the Brazilian continental margin (4°N to 34°S), we used data from the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT v2020), collected up to 400 km from the coast, at the surface (5 m), between 1991 and 2018, with the aim of investigating the role of ecoregions as potential sinks or sources of atmospheric CO2. The temperature and salinity of seawater presented variability in the north-south direction mainly because of the broad latitudinal range, reflecting typical patterns of tropical (T = 27.4°C ±1.49; S = 36.4 ±1.91) and subtropical waters (T = 22.8°C ±3.41; S = 35 ±2.91), in addition to the greater or lesser influence of river inputs in each ecoregion. The pCO2 values in the surface waters varied from 121.81 (Amazon) to 478.92 µatm (Eastern), differing significantly between ecoregions and showing an expected decadal increasing trend, both in the atmosphere and in the seawater. The calculated values of CO2 fluxes showed non-homogeneous spatio-temporal variations, from-24.37 mmol m-2 d-1 (Rio Grande) to 9.87 mmol m-2 d-1 (Southeastern). Throughout the analyzed time series, we observed that the Northeast, Amazon and Eastern ecoregions acted predominantly as sources of CO2 and the Southeastern ecoregions and, mainly, Rio Grande, acted predominantly as sinks of atmospheric CO2.

Access to drinking water is recognized as a human right, meaning that it is necessary to guarantee its universal and equitable access. Since analyzing only the average access rates to drinking water may obscure inequalities, studies have adapted socioeconomic inequalities indices to assess disparities. This research evaluated the Safe Drinking Water Access Index (SDWA) and inequalities access in all Brazilian municipalities using microdata from the 2010 Demographic Census. The inequalities were analyzed adapting indices derived from the Lorenz curve (Gini index, concentration coefficient and dissimilarity index). The results showed that the lowest SDWA rates and the highest inequality index values occurred in the north and northeast regions. The municipalities with significant inequality indexes values were rural with reduced gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It was possible to punctuate municipalities that do not fit these rules but still need attention to safe water access guarantee. The amplitude of inequality index results reveals significant inequalities in the same regions or SDWA ranges. The inequalities in safe drinking water access were made more evident by the adapted Gini Index. This research contributes to the literature with an unprecedented analysis of Brazil and could be adapted to other countries and replicated to assess inequalities in sanitation access.

 O Nordeste Paraense sofreu profundas mudanças no decorrer dos seus ciclos de ocupação. Nessa região, a conversão de floresta para outras classes de uso e cobertura da terra ocorre há centenas de anos. Com o advento do Sensoriamento Remoto, é possível quantificar essas mudanças. Nesse sentido, o objetivo do estudo foi analisar a dinâmica da paisagem de três bacias hidrográficas no Nordeste Paraense entre 1985 e 2019 e as implicações dessas mudanças nas classes de formação florestal e mangue. A metodologia adotada abrangeu ferramentas associadas às geotecnologias no subsídio de uma análise integrada no âmbito das bacias hidrográficas. Os resultados evidenciaram uma conversão de floresta para pastagem proporcional à área do município de Castanhal/PA (aproximadamente 1.000 km²). A maior faixa de alteração ficou concentrada nas áreas de nascentes das bacias hidrográficas, como o expressivo aumento de 159% do número de manchas da classe formação florestal (de 2547 para 6604); a redução da média da área de mancha de formação florestal de 121,9 para 31,9 ha; e a redução do percentual de núcleo dessa classe de 33,7 para 16,2%. Por outro lado, não foram evidenciadas mudanças significativas na classe de mangue na área de estudo. Assim, as medidas de conservação e recuperação de áreas importantes para a manutenção dos ecossistemas costeiros e sistemas hídricos locais devem ser priorizadas pelos tomadores de decisão.