Climate benefits of Amazon secondary forests—recent advances and research needs
A quarter of the deforested Amazon has regrown as secondary tropical forest and yet the climatic importance of these complex regenerating landscapes is only beginning to be recognised. Advances in satellite remote-sensing have transformed our ability to detect and...
The Susceptibility of Southeastern Amazon Forests to Fire: Insights from a Large-Scale Burn Experiment
The interaction between droughts and land-use fires threaten the carbon stocks, climate regulatory functions, and biodiversity of Amazon forests, particularly in the southeast, where deforestation and land-use ignitions are high. Repeated, severe, or combined fires...
Structure and composition of altered riparian forests in an agricultural Amazonian landscape
Deforestation and fragmentation influence the microclimate, vegetation structure, and composition of remaining patches of tropical forest. In the southern Amazon, at the frontier of cropland expansion, forests are converted and fragmented in a pattern that leaves...
Landscape fragmentation, severe drought, and the new Amazon forest fire regime
Changes in weather and land use are transforming the spatial and temporal characteristics of fire regimes in Amazonia, with important effects on the functioning of dense (i.e., closed‐canopy), open‐canopy, and transitional forests across the Basin.
Documento base dos movimentos sociais do campo sobre assentamentos sustentáveis na Amazônia brasileira
Propostas para o desenvolvimento sustentável em assentamentos de reforma agrária da Amazônia brasileira elaborados por representantes dos principais movimentos sociais ligados a reforma agrária na Amazônia.
Threshold Responses to Soil Moisture Deficit by Trees and Soil in Tropical Rain Forests: Insights from Field Experiments
Many tropical rain forest regions are at risk of increased future drought. The net effects of drought on forest ecosystem functioning will be substantial if important ecological thresholds are passed. However, understanding and predicting these effects is challenging using observational studies alone. Field-based rainfall exclusion (canopy throughfall exclusion; TFE) experiments can offer mechanistic insight into the response to extended or severe drought and can be used to help improve model-based simulations, which are currently inadequate.
Forest health and global change
Humans rely on healthy forests to supply energy, building materials, and food and to provide services such as storing carbon, hosting biodiversity, and regulating climate. Defining forest health integrates utilitarian and ecosystem measures of forest condition and...