Land use and cover maps for Mato Grosso from 1985 to 2019.

The land use change characterized by the conversion of native vegetation and forests to pastures and agricultural crops is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation in tropical regions. At the expense of expanding livestock production and soybeans cultivation, the Amazon and Cerrado biomes in Brazil suffer from accelerated deforestation and losses of biodiversity. The state of Mato Grosso is one of the largest agricultural frontiers in the world and is one of the largest producers of commodities in the country. For understand this land use dynamics, the objective of this work was to evaluate the historic of land use in the state of Mato Grosso (1985 to 2019), using data from Mapbiomas. Thus, it was produced maps representing use in the years 1985 and 2019, which provide information on the expansion of agricultural crops and pastures on native vegetation. It was observed that native vegetation reduced area, with a conversion of 22.1 Mha or 28% loss between 1985 and 2019, while the pasture grew 165% with an area of 12.8 Mha. The agriculture class expanded by 349% (9 Mha) in relation to 1985. Therefore, the analyzed data set provides relevant information to understand the impact of land use in the state of Mato Grosso due to the expansion of agribusiness in Brazil

Understanding the flux of nitrous oxide from the eucalypt soil in monoculture and Integrated Crop-Livestock-Forest systems.

The Brazilian agricultural sector is largely responsible for nitrous oxide (N2O) soil emissions, mainly due to beef cattle and the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Therefore, Brazil is looking for measures, such as integrated crop-livestock-forestry (ICLF), to increase productivity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this sector. The forest component within this system plays a positive role in the context of climate change, soil conservation, carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration, and biodiversity protection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of management and rainfall on N2O emissions in eucalypt monoculture soils and eucalypt soils in ICLF systems. Manual static chambers were used to collect gas samples, from November 2013 to October 2014, in four treatments, i.e., one eucalypt monoculture (F) and three modalities of ICLF (livestock-forest [LF], livestock-crop-forest [LCF], and integrated crop-livestock-forest [ICLF]). A gas chromatograph with an electron capture detector was used to measure the N2O concentrations. The results showed that rainfall considerably affected N2O fluxes across all the treatments, indicating that rainfall is the main factor in increasing emissions. During the wet season, the N2O levels ranged from 0.158 to 0.482 kg N-N2O ha-1 across all treatments. During the dry season, all treatments behaved like sinks of N2O. Moreover, N2O flux did not differ between the soils in the eucalypt monoculture and ICLF systems. This indicates that the forestry component in the ICLF systems did not affect N2O soil fluxes

Land use, land cover change and sustainable intensification of agriculture and livestock in the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest in Brazil.

The Amazon and the Atlantic Forest are Brazilian biomes that suffered an intense land use and land cover change, marked by the loss of native forest and expansion of agriculture and livestock. This article aims to analyze land use and land cover change history and to propose a sustainable alternative for agriculture and livestock as an opportunity for rural development in these biomes. The statistics of the platform from the Annual Mapping Project for Land Use and Land Cover in Brazil (MapBiomas) were used in an annual historical series from 1985 to 2020. The analysis of land use and land cover changes indicates that the Amazon native forest was reduced by 44.53 million hectares (Mha), while pasture, agriculture and planted forest increased by 38.10, 6.06 and 0.26 Mha, respectively, over the 35 years (1985 to 2020). In the Atlantic Forest, for the same period, forest and pasture reduced by 0.99 and 11.53 Mha, respectively, while agriculture expanded by 8.06 Mha and planted forest by 2.99 Mha. Sustainable land use strategies, such as the Integration Crop-Livestock-Forest (ICLF), can support the increase in agricultural production while recovering and preserving the environment. Policies and programs should consider regional particularities and barriers for more significant adoption of this strategy

Expression and production of cardiac angiogenic mediators depend on the Trypanosoma cruzi-genetic population in experimental C57BL/6 mice infection.

Mammalian cardiac cells are important targets to the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi. The inflammatory reaction in the host aims at eliminating this parasite, can lead to cell destruction, fibrosis and hypoxia. Local hypoxia iswelldefined stimulus to the production of angiogenesis mediators. Assuming that different genetic T. cruzi populations induce distinct inflammation and disease patterns, the current study aims to investigate whether the production of inflammatory and angiogenic mediators is a parasite strain-dependent condition. C57BL/6 mice were infectedwith the Y and Colombian strains of T. cruzi and euthanized at the 12th and 32nd days, respectively. The blood and heart tissue were processed in immune assays and/or qPCR (TNF, IL-17, IL-10, CCL2, CCL3, CCL5, CCR2, CCR5 and angiogenic factors VEGF, Ang-1, Ang-2) and in histological assays. The T. cruzi increased the inflammatory and angiogenicmediators in the infectedmicewhen theywere compared to non-infected animals.However, the Colombian strain has led to higher (i) leukocyte infiltration, (ii) cardiac TNF and CCL5 production/expression, (iii) cardiac tissue parasitism, and to higher (iv) ratio between heart/body weights. On the other hand, the Colombian strain has caused lower production and expression VEGF, Ang-1 and Ang-2, when it was compared to the Y strain of the parasite. The present study highlights that the T. cruzi-genetic population defines the pattern of angiogenic/inflammatory mediators in the heart tissue, and that itmay contribute to themagnitude of the cardiac pathogenesis. Besides, such assumption opens windows to the understanding of the angiogenic mediator's role in association with the experimental T. cruzi infection