Brazilian Amazon Biome Research Articles

Bovine digital dermatitis in the Brazilian Amazon biome and topical treatment with Copaifera reticulata oil

ABSTRACT: Bovine Digital Dermatitis (BDD) was studied in crossbred dairy cows grazing in Rondon do Pará, in the state of Pará, as well as in Açailândia and Cidelândia, in the state of Maranhão, Brazilian Amazon biome. The digits inspection from the dairy cows during milking was performed in ten farms comprising four visits (August and November 2016; April and July 2017). The cows were kept all year in pastures, and were mechanically milked on concrete floors and the animals were protected against the rains in eight farms, maintaining a daily cleaning, however, it could not be found a concrete floor in pre- or post-milking to ensure milking parlor on three farms. Manual milking on no concrete floors was performed in two farms. No preventive measures against hoof lesions were adopted. The BDD prevalence was 1.3% (22/1664), and no statistical difference among rainy or no rainy season was obtained (p = 0.72). The BDD lesions were classified according to “M system” (M0 = no lesion, M1 = active ulceration <2cm, M2 = active ulceration >2cm, M3 = healing stage, M4 = chronic stage, M4.1 = M4 with active ulceration). Regarding the 22 BDD lesions observed, 22.7% (5/22) were M1 stage, 36.4% (8/22) M2, 22.7% (5/22) M3, 13.6% (3/22) M4 and 4.5 (1/22) M4.1. Hypertrophic hairs at the edges of the lesions caused by fly larvae of genus Cochliomyia spp. as well as alterations on the hoof were also observed. Topical treatment was performed in six BDD lesions with a raw extract from trees of the genus Copaifera reticulata (Copaiba oil) and compared with the treatment of salicylic acid paste in five BDD lesions. The lesions were protected with a bandage for seven days and followed weekly until recovery. The complete therapeutic responses were 83.4% (5/6) and 75% (3/4), respectively, with an average time of seven weeks. The BDD in the Amazon biome occurs in low prevalence, not seasonal, and presents macro and microscopic features similar to BDD lesions from dairy cattle kept in free-stall housing. The treatment with copaiba oil showed similar results to the treatment of salicylic acid paste and can be used in control measures to BDD in the Amazon biome.

From Multidisciplinarity to Transdisciplinarity and from Local to Global Foci: Integrative Approaches to Systemic Resilience Based upon the Value of Life in the Context of Environmental and Gender Vulnerabilities with a Special Focus upon the Brazilian Amazon Biome

Economic and environmental interventions in the Anthropocene have created disruptions that are threatening the capacity of socio-ecological systems to recover from adversities and to be able to maintain key functions for preserving resilience. The authors of this paper underscore the benefits of a workshop-based methodology for developing a vision and an approach to the inner processes of creation that can be used to increase resilience, to cope with societal vulnerabilities and to develop the tools for future planning at local, regional and global scales. Diverse areas of discourse ranging from climate science and sustainability, to psychoanalysis, linguistics and eco-philosophy, contributed meaningfully to the transdisciplinary approach for enhancing resilience. A framework is proposed that can be used throughout society, that integrates the importance of human subjectivity and the variability of human contexts, especially gender, in shaping human experiences and responses to climate change impacts and challenges such as the covid-19 pandemic. Within the domain of socio-economic research, the authors challenge researchers and policy makers to expand future perspectives of resilience through the proposed systemic resilience vision. Movement towards transformative thinking and actions requires inner exploration and visualization of desirable futures for integrating ecological, social, cultural, ethical, and economic dimensions as agencies for catalyzing the transition to livable, sustainable, equitable, ethical, and resilient societies.

The production of development expectations and the pace of agricultural expansion: analysis of land-use practices by small farmers in northern Mato Grosso State – Brazil

In recent decades, soybean has become one of the most important agricultural food crops worldwide. Brazil has been expanding its share in this market, especially since the 2000s when the soybean became its largest export in volume and occupied most of the farming land in the country. That occurred not only due gains in productivity but also through the expansion of mechanized farming into “new land” of the Brazilian Cerrado and Amazon biomes incentivized by countless public policies. The mid-north portion of the state of Mato Grosso greatly contributed to soybean reaching such position, particularly after the 1990s, when the crop experienced a boom in its expansion. As reported in several studies, the crop is predominantly developed in large agricultural enterprises. However, the areas where expansion is ongoing feature various agents – small farmers, squatters, workers, and agrarian reform settlers – who move to these “new lands” and take part in the process of social-ecological transformation motivated by personal and family expectations of achieving better living conditions and who, therefore, actively contribute to the “movement for land.”

Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes: multi scale governance for Implementing enhanced socio-biodiversity chains

Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP), contribute to the livelihoods of over 6 million people in Amazon and over 4 million people in the Cerrado biomes. Here we explored data on the socio-ecology of extractivist landscapes at the biome scale in Amazonia and Cerrado in Brazil. We found that there are market chains for 45 and 58 NTFPs in Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, respectively. Although there is a vast repertoire of empirical data for characterizing sociobiodiversity in Brazil this body of literature is mostly case-study driven, focusing on a very limited number of products and using different methodological approaches. Therefore, although there is a robust research legacy meaningful comparisons are very challenging. So far we have a fragmented view of vegetal extractivist dynamics at the biome scale. Our work contributes to upscale from the socioecology of individual NTFP to the biome scale encompassing a variety of products and its associated livelihoods.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through good enough governance: lessons from Argentine and Brazilian Municipalities

This article analyses how two environmental “good enough-governance” approaches in climate change vulnerable areas in Argentine (Pampa biome) and Brazilian (Amazon biome) municipalities have the potential of contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals 12 (responsible consumption and production), 13 (climate action), 15 (life on land), 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), and 17 (partnerships for the goals). Local public officials from Brazil often by-pass frustrating bureaucracy by transferring their own public responsibilities to NGOs (subsidiarity principle). Argentine public servants, on the other hand, are frequently filling the gaps left by the fragile vertical integration of environmental actions through bottom-up, horizontal initiatives among municipalities. Both approaches show strengths but also fragilities, such as the lack of policy continuity. In spite of the socio-environmental differences, many Brazilian and Argentine local agents are developing a common array of individual and social “soft skills” which are usually attributed to NGOs: goal-oriented, innovative thinking, teamwork, integration and flexibility, all necessary to the localization of the Agenda 2030. Environmental institutions and norms at the local level could be rearranged to worship these soft skills in the public sector by putting people at the centre of adaptive decision-making through capacity development, career incentives and accountability.

Detection of Treponema spp. in bovine digital dermatitis in the Amazon biome, Brazil

ABSTRACT: Bovine digital dermatitis (BDD) is a polybacterial claw disease that is endemic to dairy cattle kept in loose house systems, and treponemas are the main bacteria implicated in this disease. The objective of this study was to report the occurrence of Treponema spp. in BDD from crossbred dairy cattle (Holstein x Zebu) kept in a pasture in the Brazilian Amazon biome. The diagnostic of BDD was performed by inspecting the distal extremities of cattle during milking in one or more visits comprising 15 farms. In total, it could be inspected 1,847 cows from August 2016 to July 2017, and 25 lesions of BDD were diagnosed. The feet were scored (System M: M0 = no lesion, M1 = ulcer stage <2cm, M2 = ulcer stage >2cm, M3 = healing stage, M4 = chronic stage, M4.1 = chronic stage with ulcer area). Twenty four biopsy samples were taken from feet with BDD and five biopsy samples from feet with no lesions. The histopathology of stained tissues was performed by hematoxylin and eosin and Warthin-Starry method. The samples were also tested by nested PCR for the three previously isolated BDD Treponema phylogroups (T. medium/T. vincentii-like, T. phagedenis-like and T. putidum/T. denticola-like). Spirochetes were observed in 54.2% (13/24) of the lesions, and in 91.7% (22/24) of the samples were detected the DNA of this spirochete belonging to the treponema phylogroups implicated in BDD. In 25% (6/24) of the lesions were detected all the phylogroups. Forty percent (40%, 2/5) of the M0 samples were also positive for the nested Polymerase Chain Reaction (nested-PCR), as 8.3% (2/24) of the lesions were negative in both techniques employed. Treponema putidum/T. denticola-like was the most detected bacterial in all the stages, and active lesions (M2 and M4.1) presented a greater proportion of T. medium/T. vincentii-like and T. phagedenis-like, but no statistical differences were observed (p>0.05). It could be concluded that BDD lesions in crossbred dairy cattle kept to pasture in the Amazon biome were classified as “polytreponemal” infections and the phylogroup T. putidum/T. denticola-like was the most frequent in the lesions.

Assessment of TerraClass and MapBiomas data on legend and map agreement for the Brazilian Amazon biome

ABSTRACT Reliable environmental monitoring and evaluation require high-quality maps of land use and land cover. For the Amazon biome, the TerraClass and MapBiomas projects apply different methodologies to create these maps. We evaluated the agreement between land cover and land use maps generated by TerraClass and MapBiomas (Collections 2 and 3) for the Brazilian Amazon biome, from 2004 to 2014. Specifically, we: (1) described both project legends based on the LCCS (Land Cover Classification System); (2) analyzed the differences between their classes; and (3) compared the mapping differences among the Brazilian states that are totally or partially covered by the Amazon biome. We compared the classifications with a per-pixel approach and performed an evaluation based on agreement matrices. The overall agreement between the projects was 87.4% (TerraClass x MapBiomas 2) and 92.0% (TerraClass x MapBiomas 3). We analyzed methodological differences to explain the disagreements in class identification. We conclude that using these maps together without a properly adapted legend is not recommended for the analysis of land use and land cover change. Depending on the application, one mapping system may be more suitable than the other.

Agroforestry systems: an alternative to intensify forage-based livestock in the Brazilian Amazon

Brazil is one of the few countries in the world that can produce animal products, grains, fibers, and bioenergy in the same area, either in a consortium, rotation, or succession. Our objective was to compare pasture productivity and animal performance in agroforestry systems with grass monoculture in the Brazilian Amazon Biome. The experiment was carried out in Sinop, MT, Brazil, with Nellore steers in a continuous stocking with variable stocking rate. The experimental design was a randomized complete block, with four systems and four replicates. The palisadegrass [Brachiaria brizantha (Hochst. ex A. Rich.) R. D. Webster cv. Marandu] was planted in the four systems: livestock (grass monoculture); livestock–forestry [eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus urograndis; hybrid of Eucalyptus grandis W. Hill ex Maiden and Eucalyptus urophylla S. T. Blake) arranged in three-row groves spaced 30 m apart]; crop–livestock (palisadegrass after two years of crops); and crop–livestock–forestry (palisadegrass after two years of crops with single rows of eucalyptus trees spaced 37 m apart). The herbage accumulation was greater in the systems with the two previous cropping years (crop–livestock and crop–livestock–forestry) than in the livestock and livestock–forestry, in both seasons. In the crop–livestock–forestry, the greatest herbage accumulation associated with the modified microclimate supported the greatest average daily gain (0.750 kg BW day− 1), stocking rate in both seasons, resulting in the greatest gain per area (940 kg BW ha− 1). We conclude that agroforestry systems assure pasture productivity and animal performance similar or greater than livestock (grass monoculture). Furthermore, the combination of two previous crop years and the least tree density optimized the synergy between crop, livestock, and forestry components, improving beef cattle productivity in crop–livestock–forestry systems.

Evaluation of Deep Learning Techniques for Deforestation Detection in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado Biomes From Remote Sensing Imagery

Deforestation is one of the major threats to natural ecosystems. This process has a substantial contribution to climate change and biodiversity reduction. Therefore, the monitoring and early detection of deforestation is an essential process for preservation. Techniques based on satellite images are among the most attractive options for this application. However, many approaches involve some human intervention or are dependent on a manually selected threshold to identify regions that suffer deforestation. Motivated by this scenario, the present work evaluates Deep Learning-based strategies for automatic deforestation detection, namely, Early Fusion (EF), Siamese Network (SN), and Convolutional Support Vector Machine (CSVM) as well as Support Vector Machine (SVM), used as the baseline. The target areas are two regions with different deforestation patterns: the Amazon and Cerrado biomes in Brazil. The experiments used two co-registered Landsat 8 images acquired at different dates. The strategies based on Deep Learning achieved the best performance in our analysis in comparison with the baseline, with SN and EF superior to CSVM and SVM. In the same way, a reduction of the salt-and-pepper effect in the generated probabilistic change maps was noticed as the number of training samples increased. Finally, the work assesses how the methods can reduce the time invested in the visual inspection of deforested areas.

Changes in Carbon Stocks and Chemical Attributes of an Oxisol as a Result of Adoption Period of No-tillage System in the Brazilian Eastern Amazon

The conversion of forest areas to grain cropping has promoted a decrease in soil organic matter stocks in the Amazon. This process is most striking when the conventional cultivation system is used. In order to evaluate the changes in soil carbon and nutrient stocks resulting from the time of adoption of the no tillage system in a dystrophic Yellow Oxisol of the Brazilian Amazon biome, a study was conducted in a grain producing area in the northeastern of Pará, Brazil. The treatments corresponded to the following systems: CT6- conventional tillage system with six years of implementation; No-tillage system with 3 (NT3), 4 (NT4) and 7 (NT7) years of implementation. All systems were always cultivated in corn / soybean rotation. Deformed and non-deformed soil samples were collected on a the 2013 crop year at 0-10, 10-20 and 20-40 cm depths. Stocks of carbon (SC) and phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) were calculated by using the equivalent soil mass methodology. Regardless of depth, the NT showed higher SC values than the CT. The adoption of NT showed a tendency of increasing SC of the soil over time. Such increases were up to 36% of the NT7 compared to the CT6. In NT7, the stocks of K, Ca and Mg were higher in relation to PC6. The EC correlated positively with the stocks of K, Ca and Mg in the areas under NT, regardless of the time of system adoption, up to 40 cm deep, indicating improvements in the soil fertility.

Forage and animal production on palisadegrass pastures growing in monoculture or as a component of integrated crop–livestock–forestry systems

AbstractTo meet the global demand for animal protein, sustainable intensification of existing livestock systems may be possible, especially through integration of livestock with crops or forestry. Thus, our objective was to compare forage production and animal performance in grass monoculture and integrated systems in the Brazilian Amazon biome. The four systems were (a) livestock (L) with Marandu palisadegrass {Brachiaria brizantha (Hochst. ex A. Rich.) R. D. Webster} as monoculture, (b) palisadegrass pastures integrated with eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus urograndis; hybrid of Eucalyptus grandis W. Hill ex Maiden and Eucalyptus urophylla S. T. Blake) arranged in three‐row groves with groves spaced 30 m apart (livestock–forestry; LF), (c) palisadegrass after two years of crops (crop–livestock; CL) and (d) palisadegrass after two years of crops with single rows of eucalyptus trees spaced 37 m apart (crop–livestock–forestry; CLF). From July 2016 to July 2017, all experimental units were continuously stocked using a variable stocking rate. Greater herbage accumulation (HA) occurred in CL and CLF in comparison with L and LF (21,310, 24,050, 19,500 and 18,890 kg DM/ha respectively). The gain per hectare of L, LF and CL (average of 932 kg ha–1) was less than CLF (1,190 kg ha–1). Average daily gain was similar among systems (0.69 kg/day). We conclude that integrated systems can support similar (LF or CL) or greater (CLF) levels of animal production than palisadegrass monocultures while increasing diversity of outputs, thereby providing a greater range of viable systems for livestock production in the Brazilian Amazon biome.

Establishing a standard for handmade Brazilian cassava flour from Baixada Cuiabana (Mato Grosso, Brazil) to support its processing and sale

Abstract The Baixada Cuiabana region contains the confluence of the Brazilian Savannah, Amazon and wetlands biomes. This region brings together small producers of cassava who prepare dry flour by hand, maintaining a bank of active ethno-varieties of this crop and that are of cultural, social, economic and genetic importance. This study aimed to establish a standard for the flour currently being processed and marketed. Thus, 26 samples were collected from seven municipalities of the region. At the time of this sampling, the predominant standard of the handmade cassava flour produced in Baixada Cuiabana was Dry group, Medium class, yellow-colour, of Types 1, 2 and 3. Using the Hunter Lab colour system, the predominant colour was found to be yellow with red or green tonality, with one sample artificial colorant. Consumers recognize granule size and colour as the main parameters that determine purchase of the product. Seven samples from four municipalities were classified as Out of Type, because they presented values in disagreement with legislation that could result in difficulties in valorisation and sale in the legal market.

Fire Responses to the 2010 and 2015/2016 Amazonian Droughts

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 a 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 km2 (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 km2 (47% of the Brazilian Amazon biome) in the last trimester of 2016. On the other hand, the 2010 drought had a maximum area of 840,400 km2 (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 km2 (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 analysed droughts emitted together 475 Tg CO2, with 233 Tg CO2 in 2010, 147 Tg CO2 in 2015 and 95 Tg CO2 in 2016, which represented respectively 209%, 136%, 82% of the Brazil’s national targets for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation by 2020 (1288 Tg CO2 from 1996-2005 average deforestation or a rate of 0.11 Pg CO2 year-1). 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.

Land speculation and conservation policy leakage in Brazil

The Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes have been subject to strong pressure from agricultural expansion over the past two decades. A common claim is that the associated tree cover loss was partly driven by speculative land acquisition. In this paper, we analyze the effects of information on planned road infrastructure improvements and changes in conservation policy implementation on expectations of forest conversion. We use a unique land price dataset covering the period from 2001–2012. Based on land rent and hedonic valuation theory, we argue that forestland prices convey information on expected future land use. We decompose forestland prices into a conventional forestland rent and a speculative part related to forestland conversion and alternative land use rents. Using a fixed-effect panel, we then assess whether, where, and to what extent changes in conservation policy affect forestland prices over time. Our results confirm that forestland prices contain expectations about converting forestland to agricultural or pasture land. We also find indications that the Brazilian land market conveys information about potential conservation policy leakage and explore this conjecture descriptively using dynamic deforestation hotspot maps.

Long-Term Annual Surface Water Change in the Brazilian Amazon Biome: Potential Links with Deforestation, Infrastructure Development and Climate Change

The Brazilian Amazon is one of the areas on the planet with the fastest changes in forest cover due to deforestation associated with agricultural expansion and infrastructure development. These drivers of change, directly and indirectly, affect the water ecosystem. In this study, we present a long-term spatiotemporal analysis of surface water annual change and address potential connections with deforestation, infrastructure expansion and climate change in this region. To do that, we used the Landsat Data Archive (LDA), and Earth Engine cloud computing platform, to map and analyze annual water changes between 1985 and 2017. We detected and estimated the extent of surface water using a novel sub-pixel classifier based on spectral mixture analysis, followed by a post-classification segmentation approach to isolate and classify surface water in natural and anthropic water bodies. Furthermore, we combined these results with deforestation and infrastructure development maps of roads, hydroelectric dams to quantify surface water changes linked with them. Our results showed that deforestation dramatically disrupts small streams, new hydroelectric dams inundated landmass after 2010 and that there is an overall trend of reducing surface water in the Amazon Biome and watershed scales, suggesting a potential connection to more recent extreme droughts in the 2010s.

Physiological characteristics and forage accumulation of grazed Marandu palisade grass (Brachiaria brizantha) growing in monoculture and in silvopasture with Eucalyptus urograndis

Adoption of silvopasture is increasing, but proper design and management of pasture–tree associations is required to sustain pasture productivity. Our objective was to compare agronomic and physiological characteristics of Brachiaria brizantha (Hochst. Ex A.Rich.) Stapf. (palisade grass) cv. Marandu growing in monoculture, or in silvopasture with Eucalyptus urograndis, in the Brazilian Amazon biome. Trees were planted in triple rows (intra-row spacing 3 m, inter-row spacing 3.5 m), referred to as a grove, with three groves per 2-ha silvopasture experimental unit. Space between groves was 30 m, and tree density was 270 ha–1. From October 2015 to September 2016, all experimental units were stocked continuously with cattle by using a variable stocking rate to maintain a Marandu canopy height of 30 cm. In the silvopasture, sampling occurred at 4, 7.5 and 15 m into the non-treed area from the outer tree row in a grove. Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) reaching the Marandu canopy averaged 21% less for silvopasture than for grass monoculture; however, forage accumulation was not different between systems, nor were Marandu stomatal conductance, water-use efficiency (WUE), transpiration rate, transpiration ratio and leaf temperature. In silvopasture, PAR and forage accumulation were 33% and 29% less, respectively, at the 4-m distance than the 15-m distance from the edge row of trees, associated with lower transpiration rate and transpiration rate and greater WUE. We conclude that Marandu palisade grass can tolerate PAR reduction in silvopasture up to ~20% without reduction in forage accumulation, supporting its potential use in agroforestry systems for cattle production in the Brazilian Amazon Biome.

Bacaba-de-leque (Oenocarpus distichus Mart.) oil extraction using supercritical CO2 and bioactive compounds determination in the residual pulp

Oenocarpus distichus is a native palm from Brazilian Amazon biomes, its fruits are sources of bioactive compounds and, mainly, vegetable oil rich in unsaturated fatty acids. In this study, the supercritical CO2 (ScCO2) extraction was applied to obtain the bacaba-de-leque pulp oil, evaluating its composition and the bioactive compounds contents present in the pulp before and after the extraction. The maximum oil yields were reached at 50 °C/350 bar (45.23%) and 60 °C/270 bar (45.90%). The oleic, palmitic, and linoleic acids, as well as the predicted triglycerides OLiO, PLiO, OOO, POP, and POO were predominant in the oil composition, independent of the extraction conditions, and presented excellent functional quality. There was an increase in phenolic compounds, total anthocyanins contents, and antioxidant capacity of the bacaba-de-leque pulp extracts after the ScCO2 extraction, showing possible applications for nutraceutical purposes.

Vulnerability of Amazonian forests to repeated droughts.

Extreme droughts have been recurrent in the Amazon over the past decades, causing socio-economic and environmental impacts. Here, we investigate the vulnerability of Amazonian forests, both undisturbed and human-modified, to repeated droughts. We defined vulnerability as a measure of (i) exposure, which is the degree to which these ecosystems were exposed to droughts, and (ii) its sensitivity, measured as the degree to which the drought has affected remote sensing-derived forest greenness. The exposure was calculated by assessing the meteorological drought, using the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and the maximum cumulative water deficit (MCWD), which is related to vegetation water stress, from 1981 to 2016. The sensitivity was assessed based on the enhanced vegetation index anomalies (AEVI), derived from the newly available Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)/Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction algorithm (MAIAC) product, from 2003 to 2016, which is indicative of forest's photosynthetic capacity. We estimated that 46% of the Brazilian Amazon biome was under severe to extreme drought in 2015/2016 as measured by the SPI, compared with 16% and 8% for the 2009/2010 and 2004/2005 droughts, respectively. The most recent drought (2015/2016) affected the largest area since the drought of 1981. Droughts tend to increase the variance of the photosynthetic capacity of Amazonian forests as based on the minimum and maximum AEVI analysis. However, the area showing a reduction in photosynthetic capacity prevails in the signal, reaching more than 400 000 km2 of forests, four orders of magnitude larger than areas with AEVI enhancement. Moreover, the intensity of the negative AEVI steadily increased from 2005 to 2016. These results indicate that during the analysed period drought impacts were being exacerbated through time. Forests in the twenty-first century are becoming more vulnerable to droughts, with larger areas intensively and negatively responding to water shortage in the region.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The impact of the 2015/2016 El Niño on the terrestrial tropical carbon cycle: patterns, mechanisms and implications'.

Big earth observation time series analysis for monitoring Brazilian agriculture

This paper presents innovative methods for using satellite image time series to produce land use and land cover classification over large areas in Brazil from 2001 to 2016. We used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time series data to classify natural and human-transformed land areas in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s agricultural frontier. Our hypothesis is that building high-dimensional spaces using all values of the time series, coupled with advanced statistical learning methods, is a robust and efficient approach for land cover classification of large data sets. We used the full depth of satellite image time series to create large dimensional spaces for statistical classification. The data consist of MODIS MOD13Q1 time series with 23 samples per year per pixel, and 4 bands (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), near-infrared (nir) and mid-infrared (mir)). By taking a series of labelled time series, we fed a 92-dimensional attribute space into a support vector machine model. Using a 5-fold cross validation, we obtained an overall accuracy of 94% for discriminating among nine land cover classes: forest, cerrado, pasture, soybean-fallow, fallow-cotton, soybean-cotton, soybean-corn, soybean-millet, and soybean-sunflower. Producer and user accuracies for all classes were close to or better than 90%. The results highlight important trends in agricultural intensification in Mato Grosso. Double crop systems are now the most common production system in the state, sparing land from agricultural production. Pasture expansion and intensification has been less studied than crop expansion, although it has a stronger impact on deforestation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Our results point to a significant increase in the stocking rate in Mato Grosso and to the possible abandonment of pasture areas opened in the state’s frontier. The detailed land cover maps contribute to an assessment of the interplay between production and protection in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes.

Catalogue of the Order Amphipoda from Brazil (Crustacea, Peracarida):Suborders Amphilochidea, Senticaudata and Order Ingolfiellida.

This catalog documents 303 species within 142 genera and 56 families distributed in the suborders Amphilochidea, Senticaudata and order Ingolfiellida that have been described or reported for the Brazilian coast and continent. Data for these species such as type material, type locality, geographic and bathymetric distribution, ecological notes and remarks, when pertinent, was given. From these, 268 species (~ 90%) are benthonic, marine and/or estuarine occurring from a diverse type of substrates as sediment, algae, sponges, cnidarians, ascideans, mangrove roots, fouling habitats, coral rubble, rodolith banks, etc. In terms of bathymetry, there are 214 species (~ 80%) reported for the Brazilian continental shelf (0-200 m) and 60 (~20%) for the deep sea zone (&gt; 200 m, 50% from the Campos Basin area). There are 35 non-marine amphipods reported from Brazil. Hyalella is the restricted and dominant epigean group and is represented by 22 species, including some hypogean and cave species. Cave dwellers includes 15 species within 6 genera as: Hyalella (5); Megagidiella (1); Potiberaba (1); Spelaeogammarus (7), and Seborgia (1). Among the Bogidiellidae, Bogidiella neotropica Ruffo, 1952 and Marigidiella brasiliensis (Siewing, 1953) are hypogean, but not from caves. The former is the only amphipod species recorded from the Brazilian Amazon Biome, within the Tapajós River, Pará and the latter are found in marine coastal groundwater of Bahia and São Paulo. Considering the landhoppers (truly terrestrial), only two introduced species, Talitroides alluaudi (Chevreux, 1896) and Talitroides topitotum (Burt, 1934) have been found in the Atlantic forest biome, urban parks and sylviculture plantations from the southeast and south of Brazil. Moreover, several amphipod records for Brazil were noticed to be dubious or misidentifications and are listed in a table with pertinent literature.