Publicações

The present paper analyzed the relationship between streamflow and rainfall at the stream of Itapemirim River Watershed (BHRI). The minimum streamflow with duration of seven days (Q7), the average annual streamflow (Qmed) and the annual maximum streamflow (Qmax) of 11 BHRIs sub-basins were determined. Trends in rainfall and streamflow series were analyzed with Mann-Kandall and Pettitt nonparametric tests. Regression analysis between rainfall and streamflow were established. Results showed no trends on rainfall and Q7 series. Trends in Qmed were found only at one sub-basin and trends in Qmax were found in two sub-basins. The total rainfall was correlated with the streamflow of all the sub-basins. It has been found that annual rainfall amount (Pa) explained considerably variations in Qmed and Q7. Rainfall amounts of the rainiest month (Pmax) showed good correlation to Qmax.

Na Amazônia brasileira, as dinâmicas de urbanização e conversão florestal possuem lógicas complexas, dependentes de fatores e agentes atuando em diferentes escalas. Este artigo explora a evolução espacial e temporal da urbanização e da conversão florestal na Amazônia, a partir de elementos mensuráveis presentes nestes processos: a expansão urbana, dimensão observável dos processos de urbanização; e o desmatamento, uma medida dos processos de conversãoflorestal. A identificação de padrões espaço-temporais similares, avaliados quanto às tendências de evolução temporal do grau de urbanização e incremento de desmatamento em 2000, 2010 e 2014, foi base para a proposta de uma tipologia das relações entre expansão urbana e desma-tamento para os estados da Amazônia Legal e municípios do Pará. O estudo explorou também as relações entre expansão urbana e desmatamento, com uso de regressões geograficamente ponderadas (GWR), observando duas unidades espaciais de análise para o estado do Pará: os limites municipais e uma grade celular (20x20km). Esta abordagem multiescalar evidenciou a dificuldade de se estabelecerem relações conclusivas quanto à co-ocorrência, ou concordância, da evolução dos processos de urbanização e conversão florestal. Os resultados contribuem para o estabelecimento de uma agenda sobre modelos de desenvolvimento regional que retome o urbano como essencial para uma Amazônia socialmente justa e ambientalmente responsável.

Extreme droughts in Amazonia cause anomalous increase in fire occurrence, disrupting the stability of environmental, social, and economic systems. Thus, understanding how droughts affect fire patterns in this region is essential for anticipating and planning actions for remediation of possible impacts. Focused on the Brazilian Amazon biome, we investigated fire responses to the 2010 and 2015/2016 Amazonian droughts using remote sensing data. Our results revealed that the 2015/2016 drought surpassed the 2010 drought in intensity and extent. During the 2010 drought, we found a maximum area of 846,800 km(2) (24% of the Brazilian Amazon biome) with significant (p <= 0.05) rainfall decrease in the first trimester, while during the 2015/2016 the maximum area reached 1,702,800 km(2) (47% of the Brazilian Amazon biome) in the last trimester of 2015. On the other hand, the 2010 drought had a maximum area of 840,400 km(2) (23% of the Brazilian Amazon biome) with significant (p <= 0.05) land surface temperature increase in the first trimester, while during the 2015/2016 drought the maximum area was 2,188,800 km(2) (61% of the Brazilian Amazon biome) in the last trimester of 2015. Unlike the 2010 drought, during the 2015/2016 drought, significant positive anomalies of active fire and CO2 emissions occurred mainly during the wet season, between October 2015 and March 2016. During the 2010 drought, positive active fire anomalies resulted from the simultaneous increase of burned forest, non-forest vegetation and productive lands. During the 2015/2016 drought, however, this increase was dominated by burned forests. The two analyzed droughts emitted together 0.47 Pg CO2, with 0.23 Pg CO2 in 2010, 0.15 Tg CO2 in 2015 and 0.09 Tg CO2 in 2016, which represented, respectively, 209%, 136%, 82% of annual Brazil’s national target for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation by 2017 (approximately 0.11 Pg CO2 year(-1) from 2006 to 2017). Finally, we anticipate that the increase of fires during the droughts showed here may intensify and can become more frequent in Amazonia due to changes in climatic variability if no regulations on fire use are implemented.

Although hydropower companies and governments have promoted monetary-based Benefit-Sharing Mechanisms alone as a vector of local development for flooded municipalities, it is not possible to identify this evidence in the scientific literature. The present work investigates the quantitative influence of Financial Compensation on Human Development Indexes (HDI) in flooded municipalities over 20002010. The econometric analysis shows that there are no statistically significant results related to the quantities of Financial Compensation and the development variables. The findings reinforce that Financial Compensation itself could not be considered the only input to improve development processes. Management frameworks should be considered since they can provide a broader view of the affected areas, including elements such as participatory processes, adaptation management, formal and legal guidelines and stakeholder engagement. Specially in the Brazilian case, the Impact Assessment procedures and their products could provide detailed data and criteria to municipalities to manage the inflow resources.

This study presents novel results about ocean-atmosphere CO2exchanges based upon novel directin situmea-surements of turbulentfluxes using the eddy covariance (EC) methodology. This study was carried out on theSoutheast coast of Brazil and the adjacent open ocean during two days of the austral winter of 2015, on board theRV Vital de Oliveira. This is thefirst time that the EC technique was used in this region for CO2flux studies. Theresults presented illustrate contrasting magnitudes of CO2fluxes measured on the open sea region(1.22 ± 2.08μmol m−2s−1), the Brazil Current (−2.92 ± 1.25μmol m−2s−1) and the coastal region(−3.11 ± 1.67μmol m−2s−1). The main cause of negative CO2fluxes, indicating a mean CO2sink behavior ofthis region, is due to the occurrence of the coastal upwelling phenomenon and the atmospheric conditions. Wefound that lower atmosphere local modulation due to sea surface temperature (SST) variations along the studyregion combined with the large-scale atmospheric synoptic conditions contributed to theflux behavior.

Land-use change results from the decisions of diverse actors in response to economic and political contexts. Identification of underlying decision-making processes is key to understanding land-use patterns, anticipating trends, and designing effective environmental governance mechanisms. Here, we use a scenario-based decision game to examine hypothetical land-use decisions among four groups of rural producers in the municipalities of Sinop, Guarantã do Norte and Novo Progresso in the Brazilian Amazon. We simulate changes in agricultural prices, production cost, and frequency of environmental monitoring (in situ inspections) to understand how land-use decisions are made and change with shifts in economic and governance incentives. Hypothetical land-use decisions vary across scenarios, but not across study sites; environmental law enforcement influence land decisions, but not to the extent of dominating market factors and not for all types of producers. Decision games cannot substitute approaches to explain behavioral responses from observational data. However, they can provide immediate feedback on behavioral hypotheses before comprehensive observational data becomes available and support the development of models for land-use policy planning at local and regional scales.

The proper disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a global challenge, mainly in developing countries. The objective of this paper is to review recent improvements and remaining challenges of municipal solid waste disposal (MSWD) in Brazil focusing on the environmental impacts caused by inappropriate disposal of MSW. Before the implementation of the Brazilian Solid Waste Policy (BSWP), in 2008, 72.3% of all municipalities in Brazil disposed of their MSW in open dumps and uncontrolled landfills. In 2015, after the deadline given by the BSWP to close all open dumps and uncontrolled landfills had expired, 60% of all Brazilian municipalities still dispose their MSW improperly. Therefore, while progress occurred in the management practices for MSWD in Brazil, the improvements have not occurred as fast as expected by the BSWP and several shortcomings remain, which cause significant environmental impacts.

No Brasil, a seca é um fenômeno caracterizado pela sua ampla cobertura espacial e recorrência na região semiárida, principalmente devido à sua vulnerabilidade hídrica. Quase 28 milhões de pessoas vivem na região, que concentra a maior parte da população mais pobre do Brasil. Assim, a seca é uma ameaça natural na medida em que ocorre de forma intensiva e extensiva em áreas densamente povoadas, podendo resultar em desastre quando as capacidades locais são insuficientes para evitar danos significativos. O risco de um desastre associado à seca está relacionado com a ameaça física, as vulnerabilidades locais, a capacidade de resposta e com as políticas de mitigação. O presente estudo apresenta os desafios para a consolidação de um sistema de alerta de risco de desastres associados às secas no Brasil e propõe uma estrutura inicial de atribuição de responsabilidades entre as instituições nacionais envolvidas com a temática com a finalidade de guiar ações para a mitigação dos riscos.

Galápagos é um arquipélago considerado como um laboratório para o estudo da evolução, o primeiro Parque Nacional do Equador, e é Patrimônio Natural da Humanidade. Entretanto, com a chegada de cerca de 218 mil turistas ao ano, há pressão sobre os frágeis ecossistemas deste arquipélago insular. Esta pesquisa objetivou analisar o Sistema Sócioecológico (SSE) da Ilha São Cristovão a partir das percepções dos habitantes sobre ameaças, mudanças e impactos ocorridos a partir da publicação da Lei Especial de Galápagos em 10 de março de 1998 até 2017. As informações obtidas basearam-se em entrevistas semiestruturadas com 260 moradores, selecionados por amostragem probabilística do tipo aleatória simples. Ademais, aplicaram-se as técnicas exploratórias de análise fatorial de correspondência múltipla AFCM” para 30 variáveis cuja descrição perpassa os problemas discutidos nas sessões da Organização das Nações Unidas para a Educação, a Ciência e a Cultura (UNESCO). A Ilha São Cristovão apresenta homens (53,46%) e mulheres (46,54%) residindo principalmente em Porto Baquerizo (71,92%); a maioria (60%) proveniente de outras ilhas povoadas (Santa Cruz, Florena e Isabela) e também do Equador continental. As correlações da análise estatística evidenciaram uma tendência a respostas positivas, contudo sinalizaram alguns impactos no modo de vida, especialmente relacionado ao aumento do turismo, às espécies introduzidas e à redução da mina, devido à extração de areia, cascalho e pedra para fazer as construções. Diante desse cenário, os atores locais delineiam um sistema com nuances sociais, ambientais e econômicas interligadas, mas conflitantes, necessitando de uma gestão mais eficaz.

It is generally accepted that El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) is the main modulator of rainfall variability over Northern South America in the interannual scale. Assuming that, an index is proposed to quantify this expected interannual variability in time series of rainfall. The result is the exposure assessment to the effects of droughts, measured with the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for the monthly scale. The SPI is calculated from rainfall series, and wavelet analysis is used to estimate the variance for different frequencies present in the signal. The Wavelet Interannual Variability Index (WIVI) is calculated as the sum of the wavelet coefficients over a predetermined range of modes of variability (with periods longer than 2 year and shorter than 8 years). The index was tested using a dataset of rainfall records from Tocantins state, Central Brazil. Most of the series ranged from 1974 to 2012. On average, the series had 3.2% of gaps which were not filled to avoid the effect of artificial trends on the data. The state lies mostly over the Cerrado biome and is a new frontier of agricultural development in Brazil. According to the results, the Northern region is under higher exposure of interannual variability, with higher values of WIVI. The assessment is in agreement with large‐scale features of South American climate, specifically considering the influences of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and their patterns of sea surface temperature (SST).

Climate change is expected to impact the hydrological regime worldwide, and land use and land cover change may alter the effects of the former in some cases. Secondary growth in deforested and abandoned areas is one of the main consequences of land use and cover changes in Amazonia. Among land uses, the effects of the secondary growth in water availability in large scale basins are not well understood. This work analyzes the potential effects of secondary growth under climate and land use change on water availability and hydropower in the Tocantins basin, in the Legal Amazon region of Brazil, using the MHD-INPE hydrological model driven by different climate scenarios and two future socioeconomic-based potential land use scenarios. The model projects decrease on discharge under climate change scenarios, which further cause the simulated hydropower energy potential to decrease significantly. When only deforestation scenarios are included, the effects of climate change are weakened, but when secondary growth is also considered, the effects of climate change are enhanced. Results suggest that different aspects of environmental change, such as secondary growth, may affect water production and the sectors depending on it.

We critically examined the performance of probabilistic streamflow forecasting inthe prediction of flood events in 19 subbasins of the Doce River in Brazil using theEta (4 members, 5 km spatial resolution) and European Centre for Medium-RangeWeather Forecasts (ECMWF; 51 members, 32 km resolution) weather forecastmodels as inputs for the MHD-INPE hydrological model. We observed that theshapes and orientations of subbasins influenced the predictability of floods due tothe orientation of rainfall events. Streamflow forecasts that use the ECMWF dataas input showed higher skill scores than those that used the Eta model for subbasinswith drainage areas larger than 20,000 km2. Since the skill scores were similar forboth models in smaller subbasins, we concluded that the grid size of the weathermodel could be important for smaller catchments, while the number of memberswas crucial for larger scales. We also evaluated the performance of probabilisticstreamflow forecasting for the severe flood event of late 2013 through a compari-son of observations and streamflow estimations derived from interpolated rainfallfields. In many cases, the mean of the ensemble outperformed the streamflow esti-mations from the interpolated rainfall because the spatial structure of a rainfallevent is better captured by weather forecast models.