A synthesis on the spread of the tailing plumes resulting from the Fundão dam collapse along the Brazilian coast: Integrating evidence from multiple sources.

Understanding the ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle and its response to environmental change requires a high spatio-temporal resolution of observation. Merging ocean color data from multiple sources is an effective way to alleviate the limitation of individual ocean color sensors (e.g., swath width and gaps, cloudy or rainy weather, and sun glint) and to improve the temporal and spatial coverage. Since the missions of Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) and Medium-spectral Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) ended on December 11, 2010 and May 9, 2012, respectively, the number of available ocean color sensors has declined, reducing the benefits of the merged ocean color data with respect to the spatial and temporal coverage. In present work, Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI)/FY-3 of China is added in merged processing and a new dataset of global ocean chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentration (2000–2015) is generated from the remote sensing reflectance (Rrs (λ)) observations of MERIS, Moderate-resolution imaging spectra-radiometer (MODIS)-AQUA, Visible infrared Imaging Radiometer (VIIRS) and MERSI. These data resources are first merged into unified remote sensing reflectance data, and then Chl a concentration data are inversed using the combined Chl a algorithm of color index-based algorithm (CIA) and OC3. The merged data products show major improvements in spatial and temporal coverage from the addition of MERSI. The average daily coverage of merged products is approximately 24% of the global ocean and increases by approximately 9% when MERSI data are added in the merging process. Sampling frequency (temporal coverage) is greatly improved by combining MERSI data, with the median sampling frequency increasing from 15.6% (57 d/a) to 29.9% (109 d/a). The merged Chl a products herein were validated by in situ measurements and comparing them with the merged products using the same approach except for omitting MERSI and GlobColour and MEaSUREs merged data. Correlation and relative error between the new merged Chl a products and in situ observation are stable relative to the results of the merged products without the addition of MERSI. Time series of the Chl a concentration anomalies are similar to the merged products without adding MERSI and single sensors. The new merged products agree within approximately 10% of the merged Chl a product from GlobColour and MEaSUREs.

The island pipefish (Anarchopterus tectus Dawson, 1978) ranges from Florida in the USA to Venezuela in Western North Atlantic (Dawson, 1978, 1982; Fritzche & Vincent, 2002), although some authors state that its distribution extends southwards to Argentina in western South Atlantic (e.g. Robins & Ray, 1986; Carvalho-Filho, 1999; Froese & Pauly, 2008). This latter claim, however, is in error and resulted from a lapsus calami (see Dawson, 1978). Here we record A. tectus from north-eastern and eastern Brazil based on museum specimens and an underwater photograph, thus extending its range considerably southwards and including this species among the reef fish fauna of western South Atlantic. We examined three specimens housed in two Brazilian scientific collections, MZUSP (Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de Sao Paulo) and ZUEC (Museu de Zoologia da Universidade Estadual de Campinas). The northernmost specimen is MZUSP 46335, a female 99.2 mm SL (standard length), 18+35 rings, 11 pectoral-fin rays, collected at Fernando de Noronha Archipelago (~03°50'S 32°25'W), off north-eastern Brazil. Specimen MZUSP 64634 is a male 93.7 mm SL, 17+33 rings, 11 pectoral-fin rays, collected at Riacho Doce (~09°34'S 35°40'W), Alagoas, coastal north-eastern Brazil. The southernmost specimen is ZUEC 6312, a juvenile male 37.5 mm SL, 17+34 rings, 11 pectoral-fin rays, collected at Praia do Forte, Mata de Sao Joao (~12°35'S 38°01'W), Bahia, coastal eastern Brazil. The latter specimen was photographed alive soon after collection (Figure 1). The counts of the three specimens are within the range reported for A. tectus by Dawson (1982). An individual with the diagnostic upwards arched short snout, and head and body cirri, was photographed underwater (Figure 2) at Abrolhos Archipelago off Bahia coast (~17°59'S 38°40'W), a little southwards to the locality of the ZUEC specimen. In addition to the three specimens housed in Brazilian collections, a specimen (UFLA 19240), identified as Anarchopterus tectus by C.E. Dawson in August 1977 and collected at ‘Isla Itaparica’ (= Ilha de Itaparica) (~13°04'S 38°46'W), Bahia, Brazil, is displayed at the FLMNH Ichthyology Master Database of the University of Florida Fish Collection, searchable at http://www.flmnh. ufl.edu/scripts/dbs/fish_pub_proc.asp. It strikes us that the UFLA specimen is not referred to in the revision of western Atlantic pipefishes (Dawson, 1982), the more so as the identifier of this specimen is the author of A. tectus (Dawson, 1978). This specimen apparently went overlooked by further authors, and the southernmost reported record for A. tectus remained Venezuela in the western North Atlantic (Dawson, 1978, 1982; Fritzche & Vincent, 2002), the mistaken southward records notwithstanding. Our report extends the known distribution range for this reef pipefish about 4000 km southwards in straight line and about 5500 km of coastline, and its occurrence in western South Atlantic is substantiated by at least four museum specimens.

Scaling behavior of wind speed in the coast of Brazil and the South Atlantic Ocean: The crossover phenomenon

Let us set aside the permanent and silent struggle against the Indians” writes Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos in his recent study of political change in early nineteenth-century Brazil that does, indeed, forgo any attempt to locate Indians within Brazilian history. Mattos apparently fails to see any relevance even in asking questions about how “permanent” armed conflict with Indians might have influenced the character and structure of the emerging national state that he studies. All in all, Mattos's remarks typify an historiography that at best romanticizes Indians, but even more often either simply ignores them or relegates them to the margins of Brazil's past. Indians of course appear in works focusing on the very first stages of colonial settlement. They were on hand to greet Pedro Álvares Cabral and other explorers and to provide labor for early colonists. But, then, from most accounts, it would seem that, within the span of a few generations, disease, warfare, and enslavement had completely destroyed the native populations near and along the Brazilian coast. In this way, ongoing processes of contact, accommodation, and conquest have become, in Mattos's words, a “silent struggle,” and Indians have been transformed into a topic of interest only for scholars concerned with the distant Amazon basin or with the early decades of Portuguese settlement in Brazil.

Scinaia halliae (Scinaiaceae, Rhodophyta) is\nanalysed morphologically and taxonomically from the coast of\nEspírito Santo and Bahia, Brazil. Specimens were collected on\nthe intertidal and in infralitoral zones from 16 m depth through\na dredge Holme. Descriptions and illustrations are presented,\nas well as comments on habitat and geographical distribution\nin the Brazilian coast. This study confirms that Scinaia\nbrasiliensis Joly & Cordeiro-Marino is synonym of S. halliae\n(Setchell) Huismann, and this species is recorded, for the first\ntime, from the coast of Bahia.

There is a strong national interest in the observation of ocean surface winds with high spatial and temporal resolution for understanding tropical cyclones and their effects on weather and climate and in forecasting storms making landfall. Current satellite and aircraft based remote sensing capability is limited in wind speed dynamic range and in the ability to retrieve wind information in the presence of rain, or in temporal and spatial coverage, respectively. The hurricane imaging radiometer (HIRAD) is capable to capture all the hurricane features and dynamics from a high altitude aircraft preserving high resolution measurements. A detailed description of the methods used in simulating the HIRAD instrument surface sampling of wind speed, in intense rain, from various aircraft platforms with realistic operational flight patterns through a time evolving hurricane will be provided in this paper. A noise model used to simulate the effects of rain for various observation path lengths over the swath will also be described. Results will demonstrate the extent of spatial and temporal coverage available from currently available aircraft platforms.

As data collection costs decrease, transportation systems have shifted from systems requiring data to systems requiring data analysis. Since the accuracy of these data varies with the sources of data collection, acquiring higher-accuracy data from a combination of multiple sources is the main challenge of working with such data. Data fusion is a very efficient mechanism that can interconnect data from different sources to increase the accuracy of data in line with the purpose of the study. The main goal of this article is to get the most accurate travel time possible from multiple sources. Among the data fusion methods are the Kalman filter, Bayesian inference, artificial neural networks and Dumpster-Scheffer theory, from which the Bayesian inference is used and its results are investigated. It is proposed that by combining different data sources with different temporal and spatial coverage, the most accurate travel time with maximum spatial and temporal coverage would be achieved. The Niayesh tunnel in Tehran was selected as a case study, where extensive equipment for intelligent transportation systems is installed. In this study, considering the possibility of simultaneous access to multiple data sources at the same location, the following source, Google travel time data, Bluetooth travel time data and Inductive loop detectors, were fused. The improved travel time can increase the accuracy of travel time costs in transportation planning, information on variable message signs and routing software.

This survey considers those studies conducted into estimating errors in satellite derived large scale space-time means (of the order of 250 km by 250 km by a month) for rainfall, cloud cover, sea surface processes and the Earth's radiation budget, resulting from their incomplete coverage of the space-time volume over which the mean is evaluated. Many of these studies have focused on estimating the errors in space-time means post satellite launch and compare mean data derived from such satellites with that from an independent data set. Pre-launch studies tend to involve computer simulations of a satellite overflying and sampling from an existing data set and hence the two approaches give values for sampling errors for specific cases. However, more generic sampling papers exist that allow the exact evaluation of sampling errors for any instrument or combination of instruments if their sampling characteristics and the auto-correlation of the parameter field are known. These generic and simulation techniques have been used together on the same data sets and are found to give very similar values for the sampling error and are presented. Also considered are studies in which data from several satellites, or satellite and ground based measurements are combined to improve estimates in the above means. This improvement being brought about not only by increased spatial and temporal coverage but also by a reduction in retrieval error.

The predation of pinnipeds by sharks in tropical or temperate regions is a significant cause of mortality of this group and little is known about these interactions off the Brazilian coast, since the records of these species are occasional, mainly in the north-eastern region. The objective of this study is to report the predator–prey interactions between sub-Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus tropicalis) and cookiecutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) off the coast of Bahia. The present study was based on numbers of pinnipeds stranded, where there had been observed two specimens of sub-Antarctic fur seal, A. tropicalis. The diagnostic identification of shark predators was through the analysis of the morphology and conditions of the wounds compared with specialized literature. The measures are fit in category III, to whose height and width they are similar, suggesting to have been inferred for I. plutodus. This study confirms the necessity for continuing to study the interactions between sharks and pinnipeds in order to better understand the predator–prey relations off the Brazilian coast, as well as to question the extent to which these interactions cause the hindrance of this group.

Arsenic levels (up to 130 mg kg−1) substantially exceeding the official threshold have recently been documented in beach and nearshore sediments along more than 50 km of coastline in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo between 19°50′ and 20°12′S. In an attempt to assess the sources of this enrichment, we performed a study on arsenic distribution in the main mineral substances and living organisms in the beach environment. Laboratory tests on arsenic retention by beach carbonate debris have also been carried out. The data suggest that sedimentary arsenic occurs largely bound to particles of the calcareous red alga Corallina panizzoi, whereby live specimens contained much smaller amounts of this metalloid than was the case for nonliving material (2.4 and 20.3 mg kg−1, respectively). Experimental tests confirmed the ability of C. panizzoi detritus to retain arsenic at pH intervals and ionic strength characteristic of seawater. There are two potential sources of that metalloid for calcareous debris in sediments: brown macroalgae, which were found to contain high levels of As (up to 66.3 mg kg−1), and ferruginized sandstones (up to 23.0 mg kg−1). We argue that any contribution of brown algae to beach sediment enrichment by As would be minor, and consider the ferrous sandstones from coastal sedimentary rocks of the Barreiras Group as the principal large-scale source of arsenic in the marine environment of Espirito Santo. The experimental data, together with field studies, corroborate the interpretation that arsenic anomalies in sediments with calcareous debris can form when weathered continental rocks even only slightly enriched in As are leached by marine waters, and the As is at least partially retained by biogenic calcareous detritus in nearshore sediments. Considering that rocks of the Barreiras Group are exposed to marine erosion far to the north of Espirito Santo, we estimate that marine sediments containing calcareous material are “anomalously” enriched in As along approximately 2,000 km of the Brazilian tropical coastline.

Heat waves (HWs) are atmospheric events of synoptic and global scale that negatively impact productive sectors and the population. This study aims to investigate HWs in the São Paulo (SP) State, Brazil, and describe their intensity, duration, spatial coverage and atmospheric characteristics. HWs were identified using observed data from 65 weather stations for the period 2000–2020. The NCEP‐DOE Reanalysis was used to determine synoptic and global scale circulation characteristics. The results showed that SP experiences different effects of thermal stress on maximum temperatures (Tmax), with the north and northwest sectors reaching the highest average values (38°C). The average temperature of HWs in the state was 34.9°C, with an average duration of 5.3 days and 92% of events taking place between 2010 and 2020. A greater number of events occurred in 2015, 2016 and 2019, mainly in the austral summer and spring. The following atmospheric characteristics were found to be associated with HWs in SP: an anomalous semistationary anticyclonic circulation at 500 hPa over the hinterland regions of Brazil, a thermal low at 1000 hPa over Paraguay, a Rossby wave train originating in the South Pacific Ocean and spreading to centre‐south Brazil, a positive sea surface temperature anomaly in the South Atlantic Ocean near the coast of Brazil and another over the South Pacific, and a negative pattern circling Antarctica. Apparently, there is a certain degree of coupling between sea surface temperature anomalies and the Rossby train, the former being the trigger of the event.

Audubon's Shearwater (Puffinus lherminieri Lesson 1839) is a tropical seabird occurring mainly between southern Canada and the southeast coast of Brazil. Puffinus lherminieri is considered Critically Endangered on the Brazilian Red List because it only occurs in two known localities, both of which contain very small populations. However, many offshore islands along the Brazilian coast are poorly known and the discovery of new colonies would be of considerable significance for the conservation of this species. The aim of this study was to estimate the potential geographic distribution of Audubon's Shearwater in Brazil, based on ecological niche model (ENM) using Maxent algorithm with layers obtained from AquaMaps environmental dataset. The ENM was based on 37 records for reproduction areas in North and South America. The model yielded a very broad potential distribution, covering most of the Atlantic coast ranging from Brazil to the US. When filtered for islands along the Brazilian coast, the model indicates higher levels of environmental suitability near the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and Bahia. However, P. lherminieri prefers islands in environments with warm saline water. Thus, based on the influence of currents that act on the Brazilian coast we can infer undiscovered colonies are most likely to occur on islands on coast of Bahia, Espírito Santo and extreme north of the Rio de Janeiro. These should be intensively surveyed while the islands south of Cabo Frio should be discarded. The existence of new populations would have profound effects on the conservation status of this enigmatic and rarely seen seabird.

Red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) dominates tropical tidal areas along both sides of the Atlantic, yet little is known about its degree of population differentiation over large geographical scales. Information on the genetic variability of mangrove species along the Brazilian coast is important not only for understanding the recent gene flow dynamic between populations, but also to evaluate models of evolutionary diversification and develop effective strategies for conservation. We investigated the genetic variability of the red mangrove along the Brazilian coast. Eight microsatellite loci were used to genotype 145 individuals across 10 populations spanning more than 4500 km of coast line. We estimated the genetic variability and structure of the populations and the historical gene flow between them. The level of genetic variability was low, with only 27 different alleles being detected and allele richness between 1.25 and 2.75. On the other hand, there was substantial population differentiation (R(st) = 0.48; P < 0.001), especially between the northern and southern populations. The populations from Pará and Maranhão had significantly greater genetic variability than did the remaining locations. This difference might reflect the older age of the northern mangroves, which likely remained stable during the Quaternary glaciations. The lowest variability observed in the southern populations of the red mangrove most likely reflects their recent age, associated with allelic reduction, resulting from the consecutive founder events that followed subsequent colonization of estuaries during the gradual warming by the end of the last glacial period.

Three new species of calcareous sponges from the coast of Bahia State, NE Brazil are described. All of them belong to the genus Paraleucilla (Calcaronea, Leucosolenida, Amphoriscidae): P. solangeae sp. nov., P. oca sp. nov., and P. incomposita sp. nov. The number of species recorded from the Bahia coast has thus increased from 10 to 13. Including these new species, there are now 50 calcareous sponge species known from the entire Brazilian coast. Paraleucilla is now composed of 11 species, six of them occurring along the southwestern Atlantic Ocean. The remaining species occur mainly in the Indian Ocean, and also in the Pacific Ocean, Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea. An identification key for all Paraleucilla species is provided. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Professor Solange Peixinho, to acknowledge her contribution to our understanding of the biodiversity of Calcarea from the Bahia coast in Brazil.

The objective of this study was to determine the taxonomic composition and ecological aspects of decapod crustacean species belonging to the infraorders Anomura and Brachyura in shallow marine and estuarine waters from southern Bahia, a coastline about 640 km in extent, corresponding to approximately 7% of the Brazilian coast. Sixteen species of the infraorder Anomura and 68 of the infraorder Brachyura are reported for the study area. The most important families in terms of number of species were the Panopeidae with 11 species, and the Ocypodidae and Portunidae with 9. Among the Brachyura, the southern distribution of the species Austinixa leptodactyla Coelho, 1997 (Pinnotheridae), endemic to Brazil, is extended from the coast of Sergipe to Bahia (Prado, Cumuruxatiba Beach, 17°06'18.6"S, 39°10'50.4"W). The ocypodid Uca (Leptuca) cumulanta Crane, 1943 and also the pinnotherids Austinixa aidae (Righi, 1967) and Fabia byssomiae (Say, 1818) are reported for the first time from the Bahia coast. The specimen of F. byssomiae examined was collected in the mantle cavity of the clam Macoma constricta (Bruchière, 1792) (Bivalvia: Tellinidae), a new host record for the species.