Are Protected Areas undervalued? An asset-based analysis of Brazilian Protected Area Management Plans.

When effectively managed, Protected Areas (PAs) are capable of generating multiple forms of value, both tangible and intangible, for individuals and institutions. However, the value-generating potential of many PAs may be going unrecognized and underutilized due to a limited view of management objectives as codified within the parks' Management Plan. Here, we test the hypothesis that PAs are undervalued by evaluating the degree to which Management Plans from four different Brazilian designations (National Parks, Ecological Stations, Environmental Protected Areas and National Forests) recognize different categories of nature-related assets (entities, attributes and relationships that can be protected, managed and/or invested in to generate forms of value). Based on a recently proposed PA Asset Framework, we identify what assets are mentioned by Management Plans and what assets are under-represented. Our results indicate that Human and Cultural assets are the least represented of the major asset classes (Biophysical, Human, Infrastructural, Institutional and Cultural) and that many asset sub-categories that should reasonably be expected to be present in Management Plans are frequently not mentioned. Assets that are not being considered in Management Plans are, by extension, less likely to be managed and/or invested in. Given the strong similarities between PA Management Plans in different countries, these results probably reflect a general trend. A simple way to ensure that PAs maximize the value generating potential (within the context of their designation) would be to survey their assets and generate a 'PA Asset Management and Investment Plan' to supplement and support existing planning documentation.

We're building it up to burn it down: fire occurrence and fire-related climatic patterns in Brazilian biomes.

Background: Terrestrial biomes in South America are likely to experience a persistent increase in environmental temperature, possibly combined with moisture reduction due to climate change. In addition, natural fire ignition sources, such as lightning, can become more frequent under climate change scenarios since favourable environmental conditions are likely to occur more often. In this sense, changes in the frequency and magnitude of natural fires can impose novel stressors on different ecosystems according to their adaptation to fires. By focusing on Brazilian biomes, we use an innovative combination of techniques to quantify fire persistence and occurrence patterns over time and evaluate climate risk by considering key fire-related climatic characteristics. Then, we tested four major hypotheses considering the overall characteristics of fire-dependent, fire-independent, and fire-sensitive biomes concerning (1) fire persistence over time; (2) the relationship between climate and fire occurrence; (3) future predictions of climate change and its potential impacts on fire occurrence; and (4) climate risk faced by biomes. Methods: We performed a Detrended Fluctuation Analysis to test whether fires in Brazilian biomes are persistent over time. We considered four bioclimatic variables whose links to fire frequency and intensity are well-established to assess the relationship between climate and fire occurrence by confronting these climate predictors with a fire occurrence dataset through correlative models. To assess climate risk, we calculated the climate hazard, sensitivity, resilience, and vulnerability of Brazilian biomes, and then we multiplied the Biomes' vulnerability index by the hazards. Results: Our results indicate a persistent behaviour of fires in all Brazilian biomes at almost the same rates, which could represent human-induced patterns of fire persistence. We also corroborated our second hypothesis by showing that most fire-dependent biomes presented high thermal suitability to fire, while the fire-independent biome presented intermediate suitability and fire-sensitive biomes are the least suitable for fire occurrence. The third hypothesis was partially corroborated since fire-dependent and independent biomes are likely to increase their thermal suitability to fire, while fire-sensitive biomes are likely to present stable-to-decreasing thermal suitability in the future. Finally, our fourth hypothesis was partially corroborated since most fire-dependent biomes presented low climate risk, while the fire-independent biome presented a high risk and the fire-sensitive biomes presented opposite trends. In summary, while the patterns of fire persistence and fire occurrence over time are more likely to be related to human-induced fires, key drivers of burned areas are likely to be intensified across Brazilian biomes in the future, potentially increasing the magnitude of the fires and harming the biomes' integrity.

Spondias mombin as a reservoir of fruit fly parasitoid populations in the Eastern Amazon: an undervalued ecosystem service.

Fruit flies are economically important pests that infest a wide variety of host trees. The environmental damage caused by traditional pesticide-based control methods has prompted scientists to seek less damaging alternatives such as biological control by native species. Parasitoids, especially Braconidae species, have excellent potential as biological control agents for fruit flies, being both generalists and well distributed geographically. Native fruit trees that support medium or high levels of these parasitoids could therefore play an important role in biological control strategies. A good potential example is Spondias mombin L. in the Brazilian Amazon, which hosts several species of fruit flies and associated parasitoids. Here, we provide a unique synthesis of over nearly two decades of data from the east Amazon, clearly demonstrating the potential of S. mombin to act as a source and reservoir of fruit fly parasitoids. This important ecosystem service (biological control) provided by the parasitoids and supported by S. mombin could be further enhanced through conservation of this plant species in its natural environment.