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...
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.
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...
Study region: Upper Xingu River Basin, southeastern Amazonia. Study focus: This study assessed the influence of land cover changes on evapotranspiration and streamflow in small catchments in the Upper Xingu River Basin (Mato Grosso state, Brazil). Streamflow was...
In 2006 Brazil passed legislation allowing concessions for industrial timber harvest in public forests. This decision was part of a broader effort to control deforestation, which had spiked to its second highest level, of about 25,000 km2, in 2004. Specifically,...
The Amazon Region contains both the largest block of contiguous tropical forests and the largest river basin in the world. The Amazon Forest Biome spans an area of 6.5 million km 2 and includes Amazonian forests and the contiguous forests of the Guiana Shield and...
Deforestation reduced forest cover in Brazil’s Xingu River Basin (XB; area: 510,000 km2) from 90% of the basin in the 1970s to 75% in the 2000s. Such large-scale land cover changes can substantially alter regional water budgets, but their influence can be difficult...