Water Collapse In Brazil: The Danger Of Relying On What You Neglect

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Análise de paisagem do Parque Estadual de Itapeva

A perda da biodiversidade é um dos problemas sintomáticos da grande crise pela qual passa a humanidade atualmente. A biodiversidade além do seu valor intrínseco possui um papel fundamental na manutenção dos processos ecossistêmicos. Os seres humanos obtêm uma série de bens e serviços dos ecossistemas que são fundamentais para a sua sobrevivência. Nesse contexto surge a biologia da conservação que propõe uma abordagem científica para o problema da conservação dos processos naturais aliada ao desenvolvimento humano. A criação de áreas protegidas é um importante estratégia de conservação. A Mata Atlântica é o bioma mais ameaçado do Brasil, país este detentor da maior biodiversidade do mundo. O Estado do Rio Grande do Sul possui 33 unidades de conservação estaduais e federais, sendo que 20 destas estão localizadas em área de Mata Atlântica. O Parque Estadual de Itapeva (PEI), criado em 2002, é uma destas unidades. Localizado no município de Torres, o parque possui cerca de 1000 ha. Entendendo que a análise de paisagem é uma ferramenta fundamental na implementação e manutenção das estratégias de conservação, o objetivo deste trabalho é analisar as formações vegetais e o uso do solo no PEI e no seu entorno (1 O km). Nossa abordagem envolveu três métodos: classificação a partir de uma imagem de satélite Landsat para o entorno do parque, interpretação de um mosaico de fotografias de pequeno formato da área do parque e trabalho de campo. A classificação do entorno do parque permitiu a diferenciação de 8 agrupamentos: água, mata, formação arbustiva, campo seco, campo úmido, areia e áreas urbanizadas. A paisagem mostrou-se bastante fragmentada. A classe mata está distribuída em 1500 fragmentos, sendo que 67% deles são menores do que um hectare. A fotointerpretação da área do parque permitiu uma análise mais detalhada, através da qual foi possível a diferenciação de outras classes: a classe mata foi dividida em mata paludosa e mata arenosa e foi criada a classe vegetação psamófila. A análise da paisagem do interior do parque permite verificar a ocorrência de diversas formações caracteristicas da restinga do Rio Grande do Sul. o presente trabalho demonstra portanto a importância Parque de Itapeva para a conservação e alerta sobre o grande impacto antrópico que vêm sofrendo o entorno do parque e contribui assim para o planejamento de estratégias de conservação para os mesmos

Habitat loss, extinction predictability and conservation efforts in the terrestrial ecoregions

The destruction of natural habitats is causing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Although a “zero deforestation” is targeted, agriculture expansion caused by increasing human population and per capita consumption might boost the destruction of natural habitats in the coming decades. Here, we estimated the current and future extinction crisis in terrestrial ecoregions caused by habitat destruction and related this pattern with the current conservation efforts. We applied an Endemics-Area Relationship to assess vertebrates' potential extinctions in 513 ecoregions based on current land cover data and a future scenario of habitat loss. We compared our predictions to the proportion of the ecoregions' area formally protected, testing the concordance between threat distribution and conservation efforts. Finally, we evaluated how the distribution of threat relates to the biodiversity hotspots delimitation. We found that 2134 endemic vertebrates are currently threatened due to accumulated habitat loss, which is consistent with the assessment of the IUCN Red List. Further, this threat could overtake 4209 species when considering habitat loss projections to 2040. Our findings indicate a high concentration of threat in a few megadiverse localities, some of them outside the biodiversity hotspots. We found little overlap between our predictions of extinction and current protected areas distribution. This study supports current biodiversity crisis diagnoses and the expected recrudescence of Anthropocene defaunation in the future when considering scenarios of further habitat destruction. Our analysis also contributes to the definition of global priorities to prevent further biodiversity loss

Disentangling landscape effects on population genetic structure of a Neotropical savanna tree

ABSTRACTGeographical patterns of genetic variation and population structure and their relationship with habitat loss and fragmentation have been investigated at distinct scales and extents using spatially explicit statistics. Here, we analyzed population genetic structure of Dipteryx alata (Fabaceae; the “baru” tree), an economically important tree widely distributed in Central Brazil that is endemic to the “Cerrado” (savanna) biome, relating population genetic divergence with broad-scale landscape patterns. Genetic divergence among 25 populations, estimated based on eight microsatellite loci for a total of 644 individuals, was correlated with landscape features using several forms of Mantel tests (standard Mantel correlations, Mantel correlograms, partial correlations, and multiple regression). Patterns of genetic divergence are significantly correlated with human-driven landscape features of habitat loss and fragmentation, after taking into account isolation-by-distance and historical effects of range expansion after the last glacial maximum. Our findings present important implications for the conservation of this species, because interruption of gene flow by habitat loss and fragmentation jeopardize the persistence of population in the medium- and long term due to disruption of demographic patterns, increased endogamy, and recruitment problems.© 2014 Associação Brasileira de Ciência Ecológica e Conservação. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltd

Global importance of Indigenous Peoples, their lands, and knowledge systems for saving the world’s primates from extinction

Primates, represented by 521 species, are distributed across 91 countries primarily in the Neotropic, Afrotropic, and Indo-Malayan realms. Primates inhabit a wide range of habitats and play critical roles in sustaining healthy ecosystems that benefit human and nonhuman communities. Approximately 68% of primate species are threatened with extinction because of global pressures to convert their habitats for agricultural production and the extraction of natural resources. Here, we review the scientific literature and conduct a spatial analysis to assess the significance of Indigenous Peoples’ lands in safeguarding primate biodiversity. We found that Indigenous Peoples’ lands account for 30% of the primate range, and 71% of primate species inhabit these lands. As their range on these lands increases, primate species are less likely to be classified as threatened or have declining populations. Safeguarding Indigenous Peoples’ lands, languages, and cultures represents our greatest chance to prevent the extinction of the world’s primates.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Global importance of Indigenous Peoples, their lands, and knowledge systems for saving the world's primates from extinction

Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved.Primates, represented by 521 species, are distributed across 91 countries primarily in the Neotropic, Afrotropic, and Indo-Malayan realms. Primates inhabit a wide range of habitats and play critical roles in sustaining healthy ecosystems that benefit human and nonhuman communities. Approximately 68% of primate species are threatened with extinction because of global pressures to convert their habitats for agricultural production and the extraction of natural resources. Here, we review the scientific literature and conduct a spatial analysis to assess the significance of Indigenous Peoples' lands in safeguarding primate biodiversity. We found that Indigenous Peoples' lands account for 30% of the primate range, and 71% of primate species inhabit these lands. As their range on these lands increases, primate species are less likely to be classified as threatened or have declining populations. Safeguarding Indigenous Peoples' lands, languages, and cultures represents our greatest chance to prevent the extinction of the world's primates.Peer reviewe

Quantitative genetics of extreme insular dwarfing: The case of red deer on Jersey

[Aim]: The Island Rule—that is, the tendency for body size to decrease in large mammals and increase in small mammals on islands has been commonly evaluated through mac-roecological or macroevolutionary, pattern-orientated approaches, which generally fail to model the microevolutionary processes driving either dwarfing or gigantism. Here, we seek to identify which microevolutionary process could have driven extreme insular dwarfism in the extinct dwarf red deer population on the island of Jersey.[Location]: Jersey, UK (Channel Islands).[Taxon]: Red deer (Cervus elaphus).[Methods]: We applied an individual-based quantitative genetics model parameterized with red deer life-history data to study the evolution of dwarfism in Jersey's deer, con-sidering variations in island area and isolation through time due to sea level changes.[Results]: The body size of red deer on Jersey decreased fast early on, due to pheno-typic plasticity, then kept decreasing almost linearly over time down to the actual body size of the Jersey deer (36kg on average). Only 1% of 10,000 replicates failed to reach that size in our simulations. The distribution of time to adaptation in these simulations was right skewed, with a median of 395 generations (equivalent to roughly 4kyr), with complete dwarfism effectively occurring in less than 6kyr 84.6% of times. About 72% of the variation in the time to adaptation between simulations was col-lectively explained by higher mutational variance, the number of immigrants from the continent after isolation, available genetic variance, heritability, and phenotypic plasticity.[Main Conclusions]: The extreme dwarfing of red deer on Jersey is an expected out-come of high mutational variance, high immigration rate, a wide adaptive landscape, low levels of inbreeding, and high phenotypic plasticity (in the early phase of dwarfing), all occurring within a time window of around 6kyr. Our model reveals how extreme dwarfism is a plausible outcome of common, well-known evolutionary processes.This study is a contribution of the INCT in Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Conservation founded by MCTIC/CNPq/FAPEG (grant 465610/2014-5), arising from the workshop “Fast Evolution on Islands”, organized by AMCS and JAFD-F. Authors EB, FN, WS, KSS, RSS, and ZASV are supported by CAPES MsC or Doctoral fellowships. JAFD-F, RT, TFR, and RD are supported by CNPq Productivity Fellowships and grants, and LJ and EB received CNPq/DTI-A Fellowships from INCT. JH was supported by the project ‘Predicting diversity variations across scales through process-based models linking community ecology and biogeography’ (CNPq PVE 314523/2014-6), and AMCS by a Spanish MICIU Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación (IJCI-2014-19502) fellowship.Peer reviewe

Primates in peril: the significance of Brazil, Madagascar, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for global primate conservation

Primates occur in 90 countries, but four—Brazil, Madagascar, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—harbor 65% of the world’s primate species (439) and 60% of these primates are Threatened, Endangered, or Critically Endangered (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017-3). Considering their importance for global primate conservation, we examine the anthropogenic pressures each country is facing that place their primate populations at risk. Habitat loss and fragmentation are main threats to primates in Brazil, Madagascar, and Indonesia. However, in DRC hunting for the commercial bushmeat trade is the primary threat. Encroachment on primate habitats driven by local and global market demands for food and non-food commodities hunting, illegal trade, the proliferation of invasive species, and human and domestic-animal borne infectious diseases cause habitat loss, population declines, and extirpation. Modeling agricultural expansion in the 21st century for the four countries under a worst-case-scenario, showed a primate range contraction of 78% for Brazil, 72% for Indonesia, 62% for Madagascar, and 32% for DRC. These pressures unfold in the context of expanding human populations with low levels of development. Weak governance across these four countries may limit effective primate conservation planning. We examine landscape and local approaches to effective primate conservation policies and assess the distribution of protected areas and primates in each country. Primates in Brazil and Madagascar have 38% of their range inside protected areas, 17% in Indonesia and 14% in DRC, suggesting that the great majority of primate populations remain vulnerable. We list the key challenges faced by the four countries to avert primate extinctions now and in the future. In the short term, effective law enforcement to stop illegal hunting and illegal forest destruction is absolutely key. Long-term success can only be achieved by focusing local and global public awareness, and actively engaging with international organizations, multinational businesses and consumer nations to reduce unsustainable demands on the environment. Finally, the four primate range countries need to ensure that integrated, sustainable land-use planning for economic development includes the maintenance of biodiversity and intact, functional natural ecosystems