Publicações

Climate change is expected to adversely impact dryland biodiversity by reducing habitat suitability, especially for cacti species. One way to mitigate such effects on cacti is to reinforce the integrity of areas of high importance for their conservation, also known as high-value conservation areas (HVCA). To better understand the distribution of HVCA and their potential vulnerability to climate change, we produced habitat suitability maps for 393 cacti species across North American drylands. We then used spatial analysis to assess hot spots of cacti’ habitat suitability and their overlap and mismatch. A total of 217 (55.2%) species had their habitat suitability primarily influenced by measures of precipitation (170 species), precipitation seasonality in particular, and temperature (77 species). Our study reveals climate change will impact cacti habitat suitability across North America’s drylands. We also report a strong overlay among HVCA in current and future climate scenarios. Results show that most HVCA is not represented by protected areas. This research emphasizes the need for managers and conservationists to consider the influence of climate when selecting areas for conservation and to anticipate the potential effects of climate change on the spatial configuration of priority areas for the conservation of cacti species.

Ocorrências sucessivas de inundações na cidade de São Paulo têm gerado resultados catastróficos causando diversos desafios sociais em uma larga escala de tempo. A bacia do Rio Tamanduateí, foi palco do surgimento e colonização da cidade de São Paulo. Características da evolução da cidade, denotam tratar-se de uma sociedade que se desenvolveu tendendo ao viés tecnológico, em se tratando de respostas a eventos de inundação, resolvendo seus problemas através de estruturas de sistemas de proteção ao longo da história, objetivando a utilização de importantes áreas de planícies de inundação para se estabelecer. Neste sentido, através de tentativas constantes de moldar o sistema fluvial ao assentamento humano, toliu o rio de suas características meândricas naturais, o que levou a complexas interações e respostas entre processos sociais e hidrológicos. A complexidade dos sistemas na cidade de São Paulo, se encontra na interação que combina dados quantitativos da hidrologia com dados qualitativos sociais, gerando uma dinâmica acoplada através do tempo. A sociedade ao longo dos anos respondeu com ações de regulação e controle do rio, contribuindo para o reforço ou o balanço de processos catastróficos de inundação. Essas dinâmicas de resposta consideram interações através de efeitos de macro escala específicos, tais como, efeito dique, efeito reservatório, efeito vivendo com inundações, efeito adaptação, efeito mudança de valores, efeito chamada, efeito colapso do sistema, efeito paradoxo do desenvolvimento seguro, efeito bloqueio e ainda efeito guerra de diques. Este estudo emprega uma abordagem interdisciplinar para elucidar os processos sócio-hidrológicos na bacia do Tamanduateí. A investigação iniciou com uma pesquisa historiográfica detalhada, georreferenciando e contextualizando dados históricos para identificar variáveis influentes e fenômenos sistêmicos. Adotamos o ambiente de acoplamento GIS como ferramenta de análise espacial, integrando dados sociais e geográficos para examinar padrões em macro escala e dinâmicas sociais emergentes. A teoria de sistemas serviu como base teórica, orientando a integração e interpretação de dados. O estudo propõe um modelo dinâmico de interação humano-água, utilizando modelos conceituais e espaciais integrados. Como resultado final deste estudo, obteve-se relevantes contribuições para o entendimento das variáveis analisadas e interadas aos processos complexos da bacia, trazendo resultados de análise sistêmica contundentes que traduzem perspectivas das duas principais disciplinas, social e hidrológica na bacia do Tamanduateí e ao longo do tempo, O estudo alcança ampliar o ferramental de análises para compreensão de fenômenos complexos servindo à futuro suporte a decisão.

Energy consumption demand has shown successive records during recent months, primarily associated with heat waves in almost all Brazilian states. The effects of climate change induced by global warming and the increasingly frequent occurrence of extreme events, mainly regarding temperature and precipitation, are associated with this increase in demand. In this sense, the impact of meteorological variables on load demand in some substations in the northeast and southeast of Brazil was analyzed, considering the historical series of energy injected into these substations. Fifteen substations were analyzed: three in the state of São Paulo, six in Bahia, three in Pernambuco, and three in Rio Grande do Norte. Initially, essential quality control was carried out on the energy injection data. The SAMeT data sets were used for the variable temperature, and Xavier was used for precipitation and relative humidity to obtain a homogeneous data series. Daily and monthly data were used for a detailed analysis of these variables in energy demand over the northeast and southeast regions of Brazil. Some regions were observed to be sensitive to the maximum temperature variable, while others were sensitive to the average temperature. On the other hand, few cases showed the highest correlation with the precipitation and relative humidity variables, with most cases being considered slight or close to zero. A more refined analysis was based on the type of consumers associated with each substation. These results showed that where consumption is more residential, the highest correlations were associated with maximum temperature in most stations in the northeast and average temperature in the southeast. In regions where consumption is primarily rural, the correlation observed with precipitation and relative humidity was the highest despite being negative. A more detailed analysis shows that rural production is associated with irrigation in these substations, which partly explains consumption, as when rainfall occurs, the demand for irrigation decreases, and thus energy consumption is reduced.

The Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon River, often undergoes severe flood anddrought conditions. This study seeks to investigate the climate processes associated with the opposingextreme precipitation events in the Madeira River basin and to relate them to river discharge variabilitybased on a flood awareness dataset. Despite the uncertainty in the observational datasets, the annualprecipitation cycle exhibits a rainy season from November to March. A significant result is the highcorrelation between the rainy season variability in the Madeira River basin and the sea surfacetemperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean and the southwestern South Atlantic
Ocean. This result indicates that improving the Atlantic SST representation in climate modeling allowsfor capturing extreme precipitation events in the region. In addition to this impact, certain Madeira Rivertributaries present significant climate trends. The river discharge variability reveals an increase inhydrological extremes in recent years in the upper sector, but more significantly, in the lower basin,where it has reduced by more than 400 m3/s per decade. These findings highlight the need to improve insitu data and climate and hydrological modeling, with a focus on describing the intense climate variabilityand trends in river discharges.

This article provides an overview of the evolving agenda surrounding the fourth SustainableDevelopment Goal (SDG 4), dedicated to education. The authors examine the transformation of itsguiding principles via the introduction of new priorities, benchmarks and modes of governance. Drawingon theoretical and methodological insights from political sociology of global education, and employing acombination of ethnographic methods, they highlight key moments which illustrate the dynamic nature ofglobal coordination efforts for SDG 4. The article examines the reform process of the Global EducationCooperation Mechanism (GCM), alongside the adoption of a renewed thematic agenda, ranging from theGlobal Education Meetings in 2020 and 2021 to the Transforming Education Summit in 2022. Theirfindings underscore the predominant influence of multilateral agencies and donors over Member States,driven by a preference for a multistakeholder approach and a pragmatic vision of education. Key trendsidentified include a focus on basic learning, digital literacy and education financing, highlighting thecurrent trajectory of global education governance.

A avaliação dos riscos de impactos das mudanças climáticas associada à gestão de resíduos é crucial devido às suas implicações econômicas, sociais e ambientais, especialmente no setor da construção civil, que contribui para a economia e geração de empregos, mas também é um importante poluidor. Este trabalho visou avaliar indicadores de resíduos sólidos urbanos e de construção civil para análise de riscos relacionados a chuvas intensas, aplicando a metodologia da plataforma AdaptaBrasil. Utilizando 29 indicadores nas dimensões de exposição, vulnerabilidade e ameaça climática, os resultados mostraram que a maioria dos municípios apresenta risco baixo (57%) ou médio (41%) e baixa ameaça climática (75%). No entanto, 37,4% dos municípios são altamente vulneráveis, especialmente nas regiões Nordeste e Sudeste. A sensibilidade é alta nas regiões Sul, Sudeste e Nordeste, enquanto 50% dos municípios têm capacidade adaptativa muito baixa. Sugere-se aumentar a capacidade adaptativa, reduzir a sensibilidade e melhorar a gestão de resíduos para minimizar a vulnerabilidade. Melhorar a gestão institucional, incentivar a reciclagem e o comprometimento municipal com dados sobre resíduos pode facilitar análises futuras e auxiliar na busca de recursos estaduais e federais.

The Guanabara Bay hydrographic region (GBHR) has served as a central hub for human settlement and resource utilization throughout Brazils history. However, the regions high population density and intense industrial activity have come at a cost, leading to a significant decline in water quality. This work aimed to identify homogeneous regions in GBHR according to water quality parameters in dry and rainy periods. The following water quality monitoring variables were monitored at 49 gauge stations: total phosphorus (TP), nitrate (NO3−), dissolved oxygen (DO), hydrogenionic potential (pH), turbidity (Turb), thermotolerant coliforms (TCol), total dissolved solids (TDS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), water temperature (Tw), and air temperature (Ta). The statistical analysis consisted of determining principal components, cluster analysis, seasonal differences, and Spearmans correlation. The water quality parameter correlations were not expressively influenced by seasonality, but there are differences in the concentrations of these parameters in the dry and rainy periods. In the dry period, urban pressure on water quality is mainly due to fecal coliforms. The resulting clusters delimited areas under urban, agricultural, and forestry influence. Clusters located in areas with high demographic density showed high concentrations of TCol and TP, while clusters influenced by forestry and agriculture had better water quality. In the rainy season, clusters with urban influence showed problems with TCol and TP, in addition to some characteristics in each group, such as high TDS, NO3−, and BOD. Forested areas showed high DO, and clusters under agricultural influence had higher concentrations of TCol, BOD, and NO3− concerning forested regions. The troubling state of sanitation in GBHR occurs in metropolitan regions due to lack of a formal sanitation system.

The Caatinga is a Brazilian biome that is losing vegetation cover in the last decades and has lost in total half of its cover. One of the ways to protect its biodiversity is through the creation of a Conservation Unit (Unidade de Conservação, UC) by the National System of Conservation Units (Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação, SNUC). The Private Reserve of Natural Heritage (Reserva Particular do Patrimônio Natural, RPPN) is a type of UC that comes from the private sector and therefore represents an alternative to the type of conservation by public instruments. Nevertheless, there are many factors that influence its creation and maintenance. This work aims to map these units in the Caatinga ecoregions through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and, jointly, to investigate the main motivations and difficulties of the owners for the establishment and manage the RPPNs. We applied questionnaires by e-mail and made phone calls. It was noted that within Caatinga the highest concentration of RPPNs is in the state of Ceara and that the motivations and difficulties of the owners are related according to the Social Capital (SC) in which they are inserted. It is evident that the social interactions existing in a region or in a group of people are essential for the expansion of environmental conservation policies. The creation of RPPNs represents the results of these private initiatives that contribute significantly to the New Social Movements (NSMs), increasing and diversifying the number of actors involved and decentralizing the focus of debates on environmental conservation. Nevertheless, it is necessary that all the agents involved and responsible for them perform their function, which does not happen among the units located in the Caatinga.

The Three Horizons for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a novel participatory approach to co-create future sustainable scenarios for supporting the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Whereas the approach has been applied to inform the design of global-scale sustainability scenarios based on regional perspectives, it has not been implemented to explore how local and regional scenarios can be connected across sites and scales to inform governance processes in the implementation of the SDGs. This study applies an adapted version of the Three Horizons for the SDGs approach in four sites at regional and local scales in Spanish drylands to explore its potential to support policy coherence at multiple governance scales for advancing SDG implementation through dialogue between actors from multiple sectors. We conducted four two-day in-person workshops with diverse actors (n = 59) to explore their perceptions about the desired futures, current concerns, and strategies to achieve sustainable futures in the region. Results reveal 27 similar and nine dissimilar themes related to desired futures and current concerns, respectively. These findings provide common ground and highlight different contextual realities between sites that may serve as a basis for harmonizing policy priorities for advancing regional and local SDG implementation. The study also identifies 19 themes encompassing multiple strategies with the potential to establish associations across sites and scales to coordinate actions in alignment with the 2030 Agenda. We argue that the adapted version of the Three Horizons for the SDGs approach can serve as a tool to support coherent multi-scale governance needed to achieve global sustainability goals. We discuss lessons learned and limitations encountered from using the approach that provides guidance for future experiences.

Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) is a key driver of changes in land-atmosphere interactions, playing an essential role in climate and weather patterns in South America (SA). This study used a modelling approach to assess the land-atmosphere changes introduced by LULCC over the Brazilian territory. Numerical experiments of early (2006), neutral (2004) and late (2008) rainy season onset years were performed in the Integrated BIosphere Simulator (IBIS) to assess the land-surface parameters, and in Brazilian Atmospheric Model (BAM) to assess the atmospheric variables. The models were run with a natural (NAT) vegetation map and an updated (UP) vegetation map, which incorporated realistic Brazil deforestation up to the early 2000s. The differences between the two maps were particularly larger over 25 degrees-15 degrees S and 50 degrees-40 degrees W, where the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes were replaced by pasture. IBIS experiments showed that over the area of larger LULCC there was an increase in albedo of up to 8% while reductions in net radiation, surface heat fluxes, surface temperature and surface roughness were noticed. Land-atmosphere feedbacks assessed with BAM experiments showed that LULCC contributed to a drier and colder (stable) atmosphere over central-east SA that opposes the necessary conditions for the rainy season onset. The changes included increases in surface pressure and low-level wind associated with reductions in 2 m temperature and surface roughness. These changes contributed to decrease the cloud formation and less precipitation in all three rainy season onset years, but particularly in the late rainy season onset year during September-October-November (SON). The atmospheric changes induced by LULCC show a pattern of dry atmosphere (reduced precipitation), similar to those of late onset years, and indicate that LULCC enhances the late rainy season onset condition over central-east SA. Additionally, this study highlights the importance of considering up-to-date vegetation maps because these changes significantly affect both surface and atmospheric variables.

Runoff projections are subject to uncertainties related to model structure and parameters. This study aims to analyze uncertainties in longterm runoff estimations from an empirical (Budyko framework) and a conceptual hydrological model (MHD-INPE). Results indicate that both MHD-INPE and Budyko estimations tend to overestimate long-term runoff during years of recurring droughts. Pareto front solutions in MHDINPE exhibited small uncertainties in long-term runoff estimations regarding parameter calibration (bias between 5 and 7%); differences were observed in low (bellow 5% variation) and high (bellow 10% variation) daily runoff. Related to model structure uncertainties, both models follow similar patterns and performance for a qualitative analysis. Budykos future projections tend to exceed MHD-INPEs during high precipitation estimates, where at 2000 mm yearly precipitation the estimated runoff from Budyko tends to be 100 mm greater than the hydrological model. Under arid conditions Budyko tends to estimate smaller runoff than MHD-INPE due to variations in soil moisture and water storage not properly represented in Budykos parameter. Although uncertainties were identified related to model complexity and calibrated parameters, higher uncertainties were identified as related to the climate models. Therefore, the Budyko method is a viable alternative for first-order analysis of long-term impacts.