Publicações

We investigated the importance assigned to forest extractive resources (FR) for subsistence and income generation by colonist and Caboclos populations in the Brazilian Amazon. Key informants in 114 settlements (82 Caboclos and 32 colonists) in the southwest region of Pará classified on a four-level ordinal scale the importance of fruits, medicinal plants, hunting, fishing, and wood for both subsistence (FRI-s) and income generation (FRI-i). FRI-s was higher than FRI-i, which had a lower importance overall, except for fishing among Caboclos. The differences and similarities found both within and between the social groups refuted this social dichotomy as a major factor mediating the relationship with FR. We discuss possible socioeconomic factors as probable causes to explain the importance values found. The low importance for income generation may reveal the constraints on FR extraction in the Amazon, which can jeopardize the role of forest extractive reserves for economic development in the region.

Animal synchrony is found in phylogenetically distant animal groups, indicating behavioral adaptations to different selective pressures and in different signaling modalities. A notable example of synchronous display is found in fiddler crabs in that males wave their single enlarged claw during courtship. They present species-specific signals, which are composed of distinctive movement signatures. Given that synchronous waving has been reported for several fiddler crab species, the display pattern could influence the ability of a given species to sufficiently adjust wave timing to allow for synchrony. In this study, we quantified the wave displays of fiddler crabs to predict their synchronous behavior. We combined this information with the groups phylogenetic relationships to trace the evolution of display synchrony in an animal taxon. We found no phylogenetic signal in interspecific variation in predicted wave synchrony, which mirrors the general nonphylogenetic pattern of synchrony across animal taxa. Interestingly, our analyses show that the phenomenon of synchronization stems from the peculiarities of display pattern, mating systems, and the complexity of microhabitats. This is the first study to combine mathematical simulations and phylogenetic comparative methods to reveal how ecological factors and the mechanics of animal signals affect the evolution of the synchronous phenomena.

This paper presents a dataset of yearly land use and land cover classification maps for Mato Grosso State, Brazil, from 2001 to 2017. Mato Grosso is one of the worlds fast moving agricultural frontiers. To ensure multi-year compatibility, the work uses MODIS sensor analysis-ready products and an innovative method that applies machine learning techniques to classify satellite image time series. The maps provide information about crop and pasture expansion over natural vegetation, as well as spatially explicit estimates of increases in agricultural productivity and trade-offs between crop and pasture expansion. Therefore, the dataset provides new and relevant information to understand the impact of environmental policies on the expansion of tropical agriculture in Brazil. Using such results, researchers can make informed assessments of the interplay between production and protection within Amazon, Cerrado, and Pantanal biomes.

Demand for agricultural exports in Brazil has stimulated the expansion of crop production and cattle raising, which has caused environmental impacts. In response, Brazil developed public policies such as the new Forest Code (FC) and supply chain arrangements such the Soy and the Cattle Moratoriums. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of these policies, considering the trajectories of agricultural expansion in the state of Mato Grosso in three years: 2005 (pre-moratorium and before the new FC), 2010 (post-moratorium and before the new FC) and 2017 (post-moratorium and post-new FC). Our analysis uses a detailed land use change data for both the Amazon and Cerrado biomes in Mato Grosso. In all the years considered, soybean expansion occurred in consolidated production areas and by conversion of pastures. Pasture expansion is influenced by existence of pastures nearby, by areas of secondary vegetation and deforestation. Our data and models show the effectiveness of public policies and private arrangements to reduce direct conversion from forests to crop production. However, our results also provide evidence that soybean expansion has caused indirect impacts by replacing pasture areas and causing pasture expansion elsewhere. Evidence from our work indicates that Brazil needs broader-ranging land use policies than what was done in the 2010s to be able to reach the land use goals stated in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement.

Important features of the Atlantic meridional mode (AMM) are not fully understood. We still do not know what determines its dominant decadal variability or the complex physical processes that sustain it. Using reanalysis datasets, we investigated the influence of the North Atlantic Ocean variability on the dominant decadal periodicity that characterizes the AMM. Statistical analyses demonstrated that the correlation between the sea surface temperature decadal variability in the Atlantic Ocean and the AMM time series characterizes the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO). This corroborates previous studies that demonstrated that the AMO precedes the AMM. A causal inference with a newly developed rigorous and quantitative causality analysis indicates that the AMO causes the AMM. To further understand the influence of the subsurface ocean on the AMM, the relationship between the ocean heat content (0300 m) decadal variability and AMM was analyzed. The results show that although there is a significant zero-lag correlation between the ocean heat content in some regions of the North Atlantic (south of Greenland and in the eastern part of the North Atlantic) and the AMM, their cause-effect relationship on decadal time scales is unlikely. By correlating the AMO with the ocean heat content (0300 m) decadal variability, the former precedes the latter; however, the causality analysis shows that the ocean heat content variability drives the AMO, corroborating several studies that point out the dominant role of the ocean heat transport convergence on AMO.

Analyzing the politics and policy implications in Brazil of attributing extreme weather events to climate change, we argue for greater place-based sensitivity in recommendations for how to frame extreme weather events relative to climate change. Identifying geographical limits of current recommendations to emphasize the climate role in such events, we explore Brazilian framings of the two tragic national disasters, as apparent in newspaper coverage of climate change. We find that a variety of contextual factors compel environmental leaders and scientists in Brazil to avoid and discourage highlighting the role of climate change in national extreme events. Against analysts general deficit-finding assumptions, we argue that the Brazilian framing tendency reflects sound strategic, socio-environmental reasoning, and discuss circumstances in which attributing such events to climate changeand, by extension, attribution sciencecan be ineffective for policy action on climate change and other socio-environmental issues in need of public pressure and preventive action. The case study has implications beyond Brazil by begging greater attention to policies and politics in particular places before assuming that attribution science and discursive emphasis on the climate role in extreme events are the most strategic means of achieving climate mitigation and disaster preparedness. Factors at play in Brazil might also structure extreme events attribution politics in other countries, not least some other countries of the global South.

Fire activity has a huge impact on human lives. Different models have been proposed to predict fire activity, which can be classified into global and regional ones. Global fire models focus on longer timescale simulations and can be very complex. Regional fire models concentrate on seasonal forecasting but usually require inputs that are not available in many places. Motivated by the possibility of having a simple, fast, and general model, we propose a seasonal fire prediction methodology based on time series forecasting methods. It consists of dividing the studied area into grid cells and extracting time series of fire counts to fit the forecasting models. We apply these models to estimate the fire season severity (FSS) from each cell, here defined as the sum of the fire counts detected in a season. Experimental results using a global fire detection data set show that the proposed approach can predict FSS with a relatively low error in many regions. The proposed approach is reasonably fast and can be applied on a global scale.

The unpredictable Anthropocene poses the challenge of imagining a radically different, equitable and sustainable world. Looking 100 years ahead is not easy, and especially as millennials, it appears quite bleak. This paper is the outcome of a visioning exercise carried out in a 2-day workshop, attended by 33 young early career professionals under the auspices of IPBES. The process used Nature Futures Framework in an adapted visioning method from the Seeds of Good Anthropocene project. Four groups envisioned more desirable future worlds; where humanity has organised itself, the economy, politics and technology, to achieve improved nature-human well-being. The four visions had differing conceptualisations of this future. However, there were interesting commonalities in their leverage points for transformative change, including an emphasis on community, fundamentally different economic systems based on sharing and technological solutions to foster sustainability and human-nature connectedness. Debates included questioning the possibility of maintaining local biocultural diversity with increased connectivity globally and the prominence of technology for sustainability outcomes. These visions are the first step towards a wider galvanisation of youth visions for a brighter future, which is often missing in the arena where it can be taken seriously, to trigger more transformative pathways towards meeting global goals.

This work analyzed sustainability performance of 26 municipalities in the so-called amazon arch of deforestation in the state of Pang Brazil in the years 2000 and 2010, using the Sustainability Barometer with 31 indicators in social, economic and environmental dimensions. The results show that Altamira and Novo Progresso have intermediate performance in two years and five municipalities progressed to the intermediate level in 2010 while the other remained in a critical situation. There was a slowdown in deforestation in municipalities, but despite the positive results achieved they were unsatisfactory to change the sustainability status of municipalities.

Os módulos fotovoltaicos são avaliados de acordo com as condições padrões de teste (irradiância de 1000 W/m2 , temperatura do módulo de 25°C e o espectro da radiação descrito nas normas IEC, ASTM ou ABNT). Porém tais condições raramente ocorrem em campo ao mesmo tempo, de modo que a eficiência medida em laboratório dificilmente acontecerá durante o tempo de vida dos módulos. Considerando que os efeitos causados nos módulos fotovoltaicos de silício amorfo (a-Si) e monocristalino (m-Si) pelas variações espectrais ainda não são muito bem compreendidas, foi realizado um estudo em campo descrito neste trabalho. Para tanto, dois sistemas de coletas de dados foram instalados no campus do INPE em Cachoeira Paulista SP: um para coleta dos espectros da radiação solar e outro para monitoramento dos módulos fotovoltaicos. Dos dados gerados por estes sistemas, somente os coletados às 12:00 horas entre os meses de agosto de 2015 e janeiro de 2016 foram utilizados neste trabalho, tendo sido eles classificados em dados de céu limpo, parcialmente nublado ou nublado de acordo com o índice de limpidez calculado com dados fornecidos pela rede SONDA. De acordo com os resultados das análises dos dados, dias nublados apresentam espectros com maiores valores de energia média dos fótons e melhor aproveitamento pelos módulos de a-Si e m-Si quando comparados com os espectros descritos nas normas. Também foi possível observar que o módulo de m-Si sofreu menor influência das variações espectrais do que o módulo de a-Si devido ao efeito chamado de efeito de compensação.