Land use capability and the sustainable scale: an overview of agriculture in São Paulo State, Brazil.

Abstract: Establishing a sustainable scale in natural resources management enables effective economic and ecological policies and guarantees the long-term sustainability of economic production. In agriculture, land evaluations determine the land use sustainable scales, that is, those that avoid land degradation and allow the provision of food, wood, energy, and ecosystem services over time. The paper assessed São Paulo State?s agricultural sustainability by analyzing the current land use adequacy to the land use capability map that follows FAO 1976 ?guide for land evaluation? and was applied to São Paulo by the State Agricultural Secretariat. Results indicate inefficiencies in land use at the state level, where more than one-third of agricultural lands do not satisfy technical land capability indications. According to technical land use capability, more than 4.5 million hectares are being underused (economic inefficiency) and another 2.2 million hectares are being overused (environmental inefficiency). Pasturelands represent the most unsustainable land use, where 3.7 million hectares are allocated in high quality lands with high agricultural production potential, and another 0.7 million hectares are allocated in lands with very low quality for agriculture, most of than area degraded. To achieve sustainability, lands with high agricultural production potential should be used to improve agriculture and food production and, on the other hand, lands with very low agricultural production potential should be used for wood production, agroforestry, ecotourism and natural ecosystems conservation. Our results provide a framework for improving land use policies in São Paulo State and highlight an opportunity to achieve land use sustainability

Private costs on water conservation: study case at Cantareira Mantiqueira Corridor Region.

This study aims to evaluate the private opportunity cost for an extensive forest recover program in the Cantareira-Mantiqueira Corridor Region and discuss its results focusing on three central questions: i. what is the private opportunity cost of forest restoration for the main land use activities in the Cantareira-Mantiqueira Corridor Region? ii. how the private opportunity costs varies throughout the region? iii. What are the most cost-effectiveness PES strategies available for the Cantareira- Mantiqueira Corridor Region

Low Noise Constant-Input Limit Cycle-Free Second Order Digital Filters

In this paper, a constant-input limit cycle-free second-order digital filter section that appeared in the literature in 1986 is revisited. It is studied how its relative output roundoff-noise variance depends on a free parameter used in the network synthesis. Details on the synthesis procedure and an output noise analysis for that structure are here addressed. A graphical study is presented, and, as the final conclusion, it is pointed out that the relative output roundoff noise variance is minimized, for that structure, in some cases