Monitoring Strategies for REDD+: Integrating Field, Airborne, and Satellite Observations of Amazon Forests

Large-scale tropical forest monitoring efforts in support of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus enhancing forest carbon stocks) confront a range of challenges. REDD+ activities typically have short reporting time scales, diverse data needs, and low tolerance for uncertainties. Meeting these challenges will require innovative use of remote sensing data, including integrating data at different spatial and temporal resolutions. The global scientific community is engaged in developing, evaluating, and applying new methods for regional to global scale forest monitoring. Pilot REDD+ activities are underway across the tropics with support from a range of national and international groups, including SilvaCarbon, an interagency effort to coordinate US expertise on forest monitoring and resource management. Early actions on REDD+ have exposed some of the inherent tradeoffs that arise from the use of incomplete or inaccurate data to quantify forest area changes and related carbon emissions. Here, we summarize recent advances in forest monitoring to identify and target the main sources of uncertainty in estimates of forest area changes, aboveground carbon stocks, and Amazon forest carbon emissions

Herpetofauna, Ponte de Pedra Hydroelectric Power Plant, states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

This paper presents a check list of amphibians and reptiles of the area under influence of Ponte de Pedra hydroelectric power plant on Correntes River (municipality of Sonora), between the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso. The list was the result of collecting efforts of a Faunal Program (inventory, rescue, and monitoring) carried out between November 2003 and April 2005. The list comprises 2 orders (Gymnophiona and Anura), 7 families (Caeciliidae, Bufonidae, Cycloramphidae, Hylidae, Leiuperidae, and Leptodactylidae) 14 genera, and 33 species of amphibians and 3 orders (Testudines, Crocodylia, and Squamata), 20 families (Chelidae, Testudinidae, Alligatoridae, Amphisbaenidae, Anguidae, Gekkonidae, Phyllodactylidae, Gymnophtalmidae, Hoplocercidae, Polychrotidae, Scincidae, Teiidae, Tropiduridae, Anomalepididae, Leptotyphlopidae, Typhlopidae, Boidae, Colubridae, Elapidae, and Viperidae), 51 genera, and 72 species of reptiles

O-ODM Framework for Object-Relational Databases

Object-Relational Databases introduce new features which allow manipulating objects in databases.At present, many DBMS offer resources to manipulate objects in database, but most application developers just map class to relations tables, failing to exploit the O-R model strength. The lack of tools that aid the database project contributes to this situation. This work presents O-ODM (Object-Object Database Mapping), a persistent framework that maps objects from OO applications to database objects.Persistent Frameworks have been used to aid developers, managing all access to DBMS. This kind of tool allows developers to persist objects without solid knowledge about DBMSs and specific languages, improving the developers' productivity, mainly when a different DBMS is used. The results of some experiments using O-ODM are shown

THE PRESENCE OF BARK IN Acacia mangium WOOD IMPROVES ITS ENERGETIC POTENTIAL

The use of the wood associated with the bark of forest species for energy purposes can be a viable alternative from the technical, environmental and economic points of view. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of maintaining the bark on the energetic characteristics of Acacia mangium and Eucalyptus urophylla x Eucalyptus grandis (urograndis) wood and briquettes. Trees of both species of 7 years old were cut from field experiments and wood samples with and without bark were obtained to evaluate the physical and energetic characteristics of the biomass and briquettes. The presence of bark in A. mangium wood improved the energetic characteristics of the biomass, and its use in small quantities together with wood for energy applications is technically feasible. Maintaining the bark in small quantities in the Urograndis wood promoted a reduction in the energetic characteristics of the biomass. The characteristics of the briquettes were not influenced by the species or the presence of bark in the wood