Irrigation dams threaten Brazilian biodiversity.

Brazil is among the main contributors to global biodiversity, which, in turn, provides extensive ecosystem services. Agriculture is an activity that benefits greatly from these ecosystem services, but at the same time is degrading aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and eroding Brazilian biodiversity. This conflict is growing, as emerging unsustainable legislative proposals that will benefit the agricultural sector are likely to accelerate the decline of biodiversity. One such initiative (Bill 1282/2019) would change Brazil's "Forest Code" (Law 12,651/2012) to facilitate construction of irrigation dams in Permanent Preservation Areas, a category that includes strips (with or without vegetation) along the edges of watercourses. Two other similar bills are advancing through committees in the Chamber of Deputies. Here we provide details of these three bills and discuss their consequences for Brazil's biodiversity if they are approved. Expected negative impacts with changes in the legislation include: increased deforestation; siltation; habitat fragmentation; introduction of non-native species; reduction in the availability of aquatic habitats; and changes in biogeochemical process. These proposals jeopardize biodiversity and may compromise the negotiations for an agreement between Mercosur and the European Union.

Amazon deforestation: A dangerous future indicated by patterns and trajectories in a hotspot of forest destruction in Brazil.

In recent years, the loss of forest in the Brazilian Amazon has taken on alarming proportions, with 2021 recording the largest increase in 13 years, particularly in the Abunã-Madeira Sustainable Development Reserve (SDR). This has significant environmental, social, and economic repercussions globally and for the local communities reliant on the forest. Analyzing deforestation patterns and trends aids in comprehending the dynamics of occupation and deforestation within a critical Amazon region, enabling the inference of potential occupation pathways. This understanding is crucial for identifying deforestation expansion zones and shaping public policies to curb deforestation. Decisions by the Brazilian government regarding landscape management will have profound environmental implications. We conducted an analysis of deforestation patterns and trends up to 2021 in the municipality (county) of Lábrea, located in the southern portion of Amazonas state. Deforestation processes in this area are likely to spread to the adjacent "Trans-Purus" region in western Amazonas, where Amazonia's largest block of remaining rainforest is at risk from planned highways. Annual deforestation polygons from 2008 to 2021 were categorized based on occupation typologies linked to various actors and processes defined for the region (e.g., diffuse, linear, fishbone, geometric, multidirectional, and consolidated). These patterns were represented through 10 × 10 km grid cells. The findings revealed that Lábrea's territory is predominantly characterized by the diffuse pattern (initial occupation stage), mainly concentrated in protected areas. Advanced occupation patterns (multidirectional and consolidated) were the primary contributors to deforestation during this period. Observed change trajectories included consolidation (30.8%) and expansion (19.6%) in the southern portion of the municipality, particularly along the Boi and Jequitibá secondary roads, providing access to large illegal landholdings. Additionally, non-change trajectories (67%) featured initial occupation patterns near rivers and in protected areas, likely linked to riverine and extractive communities. Tailoring measures to control deforestation based on actor types and considering stages of occupation is crucial. The techniques developed in this study provide a comprehensive approach for Amazonia and other tropical regions.

Climate change in the Central Amazon and its impacts on frog populations.

Frog population declines have already been observed in the central Amazon even for common species that are considered not to be in danger of extinction. The Amazon is close to its limit of tolerated deforestation, and parts of the forest have already been modified by climate change, which raises questions about how the fauna in these areas would adapt to climate changes by the middle and the end of this century. In this study we used population density data on seven species of Amazonian frogs and analyzed the relationship between the activity of these species and temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity. We also used the least-squares method with logarithmic models to assess whether climate change projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would be an indicator of the population dynamics of these species. Our results suggest that even common species may be may experience population declines and extinction in the next decades due to climate changes.

Amazon deforestation: simulated impact of Brazil's proposed BR-319 highway project.

The scenario of deforestation in the Amazon may change with the reconstruction of Highway BR-319, a long-distance road that will expand the region's agricultural frontier towards the north and west of the Western Amazon, stretches that until then have extensive areas of primary forest due to the hard access. We simulate the deforestation that would be caused by the reconstruction and paving of Highway BR-319 in Brazil's state of Amazonas for the period from 2021 to 2100. The scenarios were based on the historical dynamics of deforestation in the state of Amazonas (business as usual, or BAU). Two deforestation scenarios were developed: (a) BAU_1, where Highway BR-319 is not reconstructed, maintaining its current status, and (b) BAU_2, where the reconstruction and paving of the highway will take place in 2025, favoring the advance of the deforestation frontier to the northern and western portion of the state of Amazonas. In the scenario where the highway reconstruction is foreseen (BAU_2), the results show that deforestation increased by 60% by 2100 compared to the scenario without reconstruction (BAU_1), demonstrating that paving would increase deforestation beyond the limits of the highway's official buffer area (40 km). The study showed that protected areas (conservation units and indigenous lands) help to maintain forest cover in the Amazon region. At the same time, it shows how studies like this one can help in decision-making.

Giants of the Amazon: How does environmental variation drive the diversity patterns of large trees?

For more than three decades, major efforts in sampling and analyzing tree diversity in South America have focused almost exclusively on trees with stems of at least 10 and 2.5 cm diameter, showing highest species diversity in the wetter western and northern Amazon forests. By contrast, little attention has been paid to patterns and drivers of diversity in the largest canopy and emergent trees, which is surprising given these have dominant ecological functions. Here, we use a machine learning approach to quantify the importance of environmental factors and apply it to generate spatial predictions of the species diversity of all trees (dbh ≥ 10 cm) and for very large trees (dbh ≥ 70 cm) using data from 243 forest plots (108,450 trees and 2832 species) distributed across different forest types and biogeographic regions of the Brazilian Amazon. The diversity of large trees and of all trees was significantly associated with three environmental factors, but in contrasting ways across regions and forest types. Environmental variables associated with disturbances, for example, the lightning flash rate and wind speed, as well as the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation, tend to govern the diversity of large trees. Upland rainforests in the Guiana Shield and Roraima regions had a high diversity of large trees. By contrast, variables associated with resources tend to govern tree diversity in general. Places such as the province of Imeri and the northern portion of the province of Madeira stand out for their high diversity of species in general. Climatic and topographic stability and functional adaptation mechanisms promote ideal conditions for species diversity. Finally, we mapped general patterns of tree species diversity in the Brazilian Amazon, which differ substantially depending on size class.

Brazil's Amazon Oxygen Crisis: How Lives and Health Were Sacrificed During the Peak of COVID-19 to Promote an Agenda with Long-Term Consequences for the Environment, Indigenous Peoples, and Health.

In January 2021, oxygen supplies in the Amazon region's largest city were allowed to run out at the peak of the second wave of the COVID-19 epidemic, shocking the world as hospital patients expired for lack of this basic medical resource in Manaus, which during the first COVID-19 wave had become the world's first city to bury its dead in mass graves. Brazil's authorities used this tragedy to further a political agenda that implies enormous environmental and human-rights consequences. Transport of oxygen was used to promote building a road that, together with its planned side roads, would give deforesters access to much of what remains of Brazil's Amazon Forest. Here, we demonstrate that the logistical strategy adopted by the Jair Bolsonaro administration's Ministries of Health and Infrastructure to bring oxygen to Manaus was the worst possible choice, and the foreseeable delay in the arrival of oxygen cost hundreds of lives. Rather than sending trucks to carry oxygen on the nearly impassible Highway BR-319 during the rainy season, the most appropriate transport option was barges on the Madeira River. As oxygen supplies dwindled in Manaus, the families of wealthier COVID-19 victims scrambled to buy the few remaining cylinders at prices out of reach for those in poorer (and often ethnically distinct) economic strata. Ethnic health disparities are aggravated by both the direct consequences of the oxygen crisis and, on the longer term, by the consequences of the highway project that political use of the crisis materially advanced.

Fisheries monitoring in Brazil: How can the 2030 agenda be met without fisheries statistics? / Monitoramento da pesca no Brasil: como cumprir a agenda 2030 sem estatísticas da pesca?

Every activity that involves exploitation of natural resources, such as fishing, needs to be organized and conducted based on information from monitoring programs to allow continuous evaluation. With the increasing fishing pressure in Brazil, the understanding of the importance of fisheries monitoring programs and how they can inform and assist in conservation decision-making remains limited. Based on the literature on fisheries and participatory conservation, we call attention to the need to generate information on the national fisheries sector in order to improve fisheries in the country. Given the context of the need to generate information on fishing stocks under exploitation, as well as to identify potential alternative fisheries and carry out various sectoral analyses in compliance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we present and discuss in the present paper the lack of a system of continuous fishing monitoring in Brazil and its effects on the fisheries sustainability in the country.

Toda atividade que atua envolvendo a exploração de recursos naturais, como a pesca, precisa ser organizada e conduzida com base nas informações dos programas de monitoramento para permitir uma avaliação contínua. Com o aumento da pressão pesqueira no Brasil, o entendimento da importância dos programas de monitoramento da pesca e como eles podem informar e auxiliar na tomada de decisões de conservação permanece limitado. Com base na literatura sobre pesca e conservação participativa, chamamos a atenção para a necessidade de gerar informações sobre o setor pesqueiro nacional para melhorar a pesca no país. Dado o contexto da necessidade de gerar informações sobre os estoques pesqueiros em exploração, bem como identificar potenciais alternativas de pesca e realizar diversas análises setoriais em conformidade com a Agenda 2030 para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, é apresentada e discutida no presente trabalho a falta de um sistema de monitoramento contínuo da pesca no Brasil e seus efeitos na sustentabilidade da pesca no país.

Misinformation Caused Increased Urban Mobility and the End of Social Confinement Before the Second Wave of COVID-19 in Amazonia.

Tendentious projections about COVID-19 in Brazil provided an appealing excuse for individuals and decision-makers to justify poor choices during a critical phase of the pandemic. The erroneous results likely contributed to premature resumption of in-person school classes and easing of restrictions on social contact, favoring the resurgence of COVID-19. In Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon region, the COVID-19 pandemic did not end in 2020 of its own accord, but rather rebounded in a disastrous second wave of the disease.

The drivers and impacts of Amazon forest degradation.

Approximately 2.5 × 106 square kilometers of the Amazon forest are currently degraded by fire, edge effects, timber extraction, and/or extreme drought, representing 38% of all remaining forests in the region. Carbon emissions from this degradation total up to 0.2 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C year-1), which is equivalent to, if not greater than, the emissions from Amazon deforestation (0.06 to 0.21 Pg C year-1). Amazon forest degradation can reduce dry-season evapotranspiration by up to 34% and cause as much biodiversity loss as deforestation in human-modified landscapes, generating uneven socioeconomic burdens, mainly to forest dwellers. Projections indicate that degradation will remain a dominant source of carbon emissions independent of deforestation rates. Policies to tackle degradation should be integrated with efforts to curb deforestation and complemented with innovative measures addressing the disturbances that degrade the Amazon forest.

Effects of Amazonian flying rivers on frog biodiversity and populations in the Atlantic rainforest.

Given the speed at which humans are changing the climate, species with high degrees of endemism may not have time to avoid extinction through adaptation. We investigated through teleconnection analysis the origin of rainfall that determines the phylogenetic diversity of rainforest frogs and the effects of microclimate differences in shaping the morphological traits of isolated populations (which contribute to greater phylogenetic diversity and speciation). We also investigated through teleconnection analysis how deforestation in Amazonia can affect ecosystem services that are fundamental to maintaining the climate of the Atlantic rainforest biodiversity hotspot. Seasonal winds known as flying rivers carry water vapor from Amazonia to the Atlantic Forest, and the breaking of this ecosystem service could lead Atlantic Forest species to population decline and extinction in the short term. Our results suggest that the selection of morphological traits that shape Atlantic Forest frog diversity and their population dynamics are influenced by the Amazonian flying rivers. Our results also suggest that the increases of temperature anomalies in the Atlantic Ocean due to global warming and in the Amazon forest due to deforestation are already breaking this cycle and threaten the biodiversity of the Atlantic Forest hotspot.

Efectos de los ríos voladores de la Amazonía sobre la diversidad y las poblaciones de ranas en la Mata Atlántica Resumen Con la velocidad a la que la humanidad está alterando el clima, puede que las especies con un nivel elevado de endemismo no cuenten con tiempo suficiente para adaptarse y evitar la extinción. Usamos un análisis de teleconexión para investigar el origen de las precipitaciones que determinan la diversidad filogenética de las ranas selváticas y los efectos de las diferencias microclimáticas sobre la determinación de las características morfológicas de las poblaciones aisladas, las cuales contribuyen a una mayor especiación y diversidad filogenética. También utilizamos este análisis para investigar cómo la deforestación en la Amazonía puede afectar los servicios ambientales que son fundamentales para mantener el punto caliente de biodiversidad que es la Mata Atlántica. Los ríos voladores son vientos estacionales que transportan vapor de agua desde la Amazonía hasta la Mata Atlántica; la interrupción de este servicio ambiental podría derivar en la declinación poblacional y la extinción a corto plazo de las especies en este ecosistema. Nuestros resultados sugieren que los ríos voladores de la Amazonía influyen sobre la selección de las características morfológicas que determinan la diversidad de ranas y sus dinámicas poblacionales en la Mata Atlántica. Nuestros resultados también sugieren que el incremento de anomalías térmicas en el Océano Atlántico, causadas por el calentamiento global, y en la Amazonía, causadas por la deforestación, ya están interrumpiendo este ciclo y son una amenaza para la biodiversidad del punto caliente que es la Mata Atlántica.

Misinformation caused increased urban mobility and the end of social confinement before the second wave of COVID-19 in Amazonia

Tendentious projections about COVID-19 in Brazil provided an appealing excuse for individuals and decision-makers to justify poor choices during a critical phase of the pandemic. The erroneous results likely contributed to premature resumption of in-person school classes and easing of restrictions on social contact, favoring the resurgence of COVID-19. In Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon region, the COVID-19 pandemic did not end in 2020 of its own accord, but rather rebounded in a disastrous second wave of the disease.

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.

Synthesizing the connections between environmental disturbances and zoonotic spillover.

Zoonotic spillover is a phenomenon characterized by the transfer of pathogens between different animal species. Most human emerging infectious diseases originate from non-human animals, and human-related environmental disturbances are the driving forces of the emergence of new human pathogens. Synthesizing the sequence of basic events involved in the emergence of new human pathogens is important for guiding the understanding, identification, and description of key aspects of human activities that can be changed to prevent new outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics. This review synthesizes the connections between environmental disturbances and increased risk of spillover events based on the One Health perspective. Anthropogenic disturbances in the environment (e.g., deforestation, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity loss, wildlife exploitation) lead to changes in ecological niches, reduction of the dilution effect, increased contact between humans and other animals, changes in the incidence and load of pathogens in animal populations, and alterations in the abiotic factors of landscapes. These phenomena can increase the risk of spillover events and, potentially, facilitate new infectious disease outbreaks. Using Brazil as a study model, this review brings a discussion concerning anthropogenic activities in the Amazon region and their potential impacts on spillover risk and spread of emerging diseases in this region.