PRESENÇA HUMANA EM UNIDADE DE CONSERVAÇÃO: um impasse científico, jurídico ou político?
A Constituição Brasileira, no seu artigo 225, declara que "todos têm direito ao meio ambiente ecologicamente equilibrado, bem de uso comum do povo e essencial à sadia qualidade de vida, impondo-se ao Poder Público e à coletividade o dever de defendê-lo e...
Classifying successional forests using Landsat spectral properties and ecological characteristics in eastern Amazônia
Secondary forests may become increasingly important as temporary reservoirs of genetic diversity, stocks of carbon and nutrients, and moderators of hydrologic cycles in the Amazon Basin as agricultural lands are abandoned and often later cleared again for...
Contribution of transpiration to forest ambient vapour based on isotopic measurements
Using a simple isotope mixing model, we evaluated the relative proportion of water vapour generated by plant transpiration and by soil evaporation at two sites in the Amazon basin. Sampling was carried out at two different soil covers (forest and pasture), in a...
Leaf-cutting ant (Atta sexdens) and nutrient cycling: deep soil inorganic nitrogen stocks, mineralization, and nitrification in Eastern Amazonia
Nest excavation and agricultural activities of the leaf-cutting ant Atta sexdens create complex belowground heterogeneity in secondary forests of Eastern Amazonia. We examined the effects of this heterogeneity on inorganic-N stocks, net mineralization, and net...
Primates in a forest fragment in Eastern Amazon
Many new towns were established along the Belém-Brasília Highway following its construction in the 1960s. One was Paragominas, in the northeastern region of the state of Pará (Fig. 1). Large areas of forest in this region were cut for cattle pasture during...
Some doubts about concessions in Brazil – Should Brazil shelve its proposed system of forest concessions?
The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil inherited, in its National Forest Program, a formidable proposal to increase the area designated to national forests (Flonas) in the Amazon from eight to 50 million hectares by the year 2010. This objective is...
Moving Toward Sustainability in the Local Management of Floodplain Lake Fisheries in the Brazilian Amazon
Local management systems are generally regarded as traditional systems developed over generations. However, in the Brazilian Amazon, as in many other regions, community or collective management is a response to more recent changes in the exploitation of local...