Remanescentes de vegetação natural em diferentes tipos de unidades de produção agropecuária na microbacia do rio Oriçanga - São Paulo.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo avaliar a cobertura com vegetação natural em diferentes tipos de unidades de produção agropecuárias, e é parte de um estudo em que se avaliam os impactos econômicos da reserva legal florestal sobre distintos tipos de produtores. A região escolhida para análise foi a Microbacia do Rio Oriçanga, que é representativa da estrutura produtiva altamente diversificada da região Nordeste do Estado de São Paulo. Elaborou-se inicialmente uma tipologia de unidades de produção agropecuária, a partir de dados do Levantamento de Unidades de Produção Agropecuária do Estado de São Paulo (LUPA), empregando-se análise estatística multivariada. A estimativa da quantidade de vegetação natural dentro das propriedades típicas se fez através de técnicas de geoprocessamento. Os resultados, além de descreverem a estrutura produtiva de cada um dos oito tipo encontrados, fornecem uma estimativa dos remanescentes de vegetação natural mantidos por cada um deles. Os resultados evidenciam que, em média, cerca de 43% das Áreas de Proteção Permanentes (APPs) das unidades de produção analisadas estão cobertas com vegetação natural e que perto de 7,5% das áreas das unidades de produção representam áreas de vegetação natural fora das APPS, passíveis, em princípio, de serem averbadas como reserva legal, porém com importante variação entre os diversos tipos estudados. As análises conduzidas considerando a diferenciação dos produtores poderiam abalizar políticas agroambientais, uma vez que existe uma variedade muito grande de situações

A cluster randomised controlled trial of the community effectiveness of two interventions in rural Malawi to improve health care and to reduce maternal, newborn and infant mortality

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The UN Millennium Development Goals call for substantial reductions in maternal and child mortality, to be achieved through reductions in morbidity and mortality during pregnancy, delivery, postpartum and early childhood. The MaiMwana Project aims to test community-based interventions that tackle maternal and child health problems through increasing awareness and local action.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>This study uses a two-by-two factorial cluster-randomised controlled trial design to test the impact of two interventions. The impact of a community mobilisation intervention run through women's groups, on home care, health care-seeking behaviours and maternal and infant mortality, will be tested. The impact of a volunteer-led infant feeding and care support intervention, on rates of exclusive breastfeeding, uptake of HIV-prevention services and infant mortality, will also be tested. The women's group intervention will employ local female facilitators to guide women's groups through a four-phase cycle of problem identification and prioritisation, strategy identification, implementation and evaluation. Meetings will be held monthly at village level. The infant feeding intervention will select local volunteers to provide advice and support for breastfeeding, birth preparedness, newborn care and immunisation. They will visit pregnant and new mothers in their homes five times during and after pregnancy.</p> <p>The unit of intervention allocation will be clusters of rural villages of 2500-4000 population. 48 clusters have been defined and randomly allocated to either women's groups only, infant feeding support only, both interventions, or no intervention. Study villages are surrounded by 'buffer areas' of non-study villages to reduce contamination between intervention and control areas. Outcome indicators will be measured through a demographic surveillance system. Primary outcomes will be maternal, infant, neonatal and perinatal mortality for the women's group intervention, and exclusive breastfeeding rates and infant mortality for the infant feeding intervention.</p> <p>Structured interviews will be conducted with mothers one-month and six-months after birth to collect detailed quantitative data on care practices and health-care-seeking. Further qualitative, quantitative and economic data will be collected for process and economic evaluations.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ISRCTN06477126</p

Reviewing the use of resilience concepts in forest sciences

Purpose of the review Resilience is a key concept to deal with an uncertain future in forestry. In recent years, it has received increasing attention from both research and practice. However, a common understanding of what resilience means in a forestry context, and how to operationalise it is lacking. Here, we conducted a systematic review of the recent forest science literature on resilience in the forestry context, synthesising how resilience is defined and assessed. Recent findings Based on a detailed review of 255 studies, we analysed how the concepts of engineering resilience, ecological resilience, and social-ecological resilience are used in forest sciences. A clear majority of the studies applied the concept of engineering resilience, quantifying resilience as the recovery time after a disturbance. The two most used indicators for engineering resilience were basal area increment and vegetation cover, whereas ecological resilience studies frequently focus on vegetation cover and tree density. In contrast, important social-ecological resilience indicators used in the literature are socio-economic diversity and stock of natural resources. In the context of global change, we expected an increase in studies adopting the more holistic social-ecological resilience concept, but this was not the observed trend. Summary Our analysis points to the nestedness of these three resilience concepts, suggesting that they are complementary rather than contradictory. It also means that the variety of resilience approaches does not need to be an obstacle for operationalisation of the concept. We provide guidance for choosing the most suitable resilience concept and indicators based on the management, disturbance and application context

The suggestion that landscapes should contain 40% of forest cover lacks evidence and is problematic

A recent review suggests that forest cover needs to be restored or maintained on at least 40% of land area. In the absence of empirical evidence to support this threshold, we discuss how this suggestion is unhelpful and potentially dangerous. We advocate for regionally defined thresholds to inform conservation and restoration

Safeguarding Ecosystem Services: A Methodological Framework to Buffer the Joint Effect of Habitat Configuration and Climate Change

<div><p>Ecosystem services provided by mobile agents are increasingly threatened by the loss and modification of natural habitats and by climate change, risking the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and human welfare. Research oriented towards a better understanding of the joint effects of land use and climate change over the provision of specific ecosystem services is therefore essential to safeguard such services. Here we propose a methodological framework, which integrates species distribution forecasts and graph theory to identify key conservation areas, which if protected or restored could improve habitat connectivity and safeguard ecosystem services. We applied the proposed framework to the provision of pollination services by a tropical stingless bee (<i>Melipona quadrifasciata</i>), a key pollinator of native flora from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and important agricultural crops. Based on the current distribution of this bee and that of the plant species used to feed and nest, we projected the joint distribution of bees and plants in the future, considering a moderate climate change scenario (following IPPC). We then used this information, the bee’s flight range, and the current mapping of Atlantic Forest remnants to infer habitat suitability and quantify local and regional habitat connectivity for 2030, 2050 and 2080. Our results revealed north to south and coastal to inland shifts in the pollinator distribution during the next 70 years. Current and future connectivity maps unraveled the most important corridors, which if protected or restored, could facilitate the dispersal and establishment of bees during distribution shifts. Our results also suggest that coffee plantations from eastern São Paulo and southern Minas Gerais States could suffer a pollinator deficit in the future, whereas pollination services seem to be secured in southern Brazil. Landowners and governmental agencies could use this information to implement new land use schemes. Overall, our proposed methodological framework could help design novel conservational and agricultural practices that can be crucial to conserve ecosystem services by buffering the joint effect of habitat configuration and climate change.</p></div

(a) Bee habitat suitability according to species distribution model outputs for (a1) current conditions and for (a2) 2030, (a3) 2050, and (a4) 2080 scenarios of climate change.

<p>Modeling was executed using climatic variables (abiotic factors) and mutualistic plant species (biotic factors) (see item A on Material and Methods section). (b) Habitat connectivity of each focal landscape (FL) represented by the variation of Integral Index of Connectivity (ΔIIC) through the study area, for (b1) current conditions and for (b2) 2030, (b3) 2050, and (b4) 2080 scenarios. Since the importance of each FL is measured by ΔIIC, the highest the ΔIIC the highest the FL importance (item B on Material and Methods section). (c) Changes in habitat connectivity represented by the variation in ΔIIC considering two climatic subsequent periods: (c1) current to 2030; (c2) 2030 to 2050; (c3) 2050 to 2080; (c4) current to 2080.</p

Methodology workflow: (a) Distribution modeling of <i>Melipona quadrifasciata</i> species included potential distribution of plants used to nest and to collect pollen and nectar (biotic factors) and climatic variables (abiotic factors).

<p>This modeling resulted in one present day and three future models (2030, 2050, 2080) of habitat suitability for the bee species (see item A on Material and Methods section and <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0129225#pone.0129225.g003" target="_blank">Fig 3A</a> on <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0129225#sec008" target="_blank">Results</a> section). (b) Local scale analyses estimated the habitat connectivity in each focal landscape (FL, hexagonal cells) through the Probability of Connectivity Index (PC). The PC was based on the bee dispersal capability and also on forest remnant areas that were weighted by habitat suitability obtained with the species distribution modeling (previous step). On regional scale, the importance of each FL to the potential bee flux through the study area was measured based on removal experiments, which estimate the contribution of each FL in changes in the Integral Index of Connectivity (ΔIIC) (item B on Material and Methods section and <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0129225#pone.0129225.g003" target="_blank">Fig 3B</a> on Results section). (c) The determination of priority areas for conservation and restoration and for ecosystem services protection and management was based on temporal changes in FL regional importance (item C on Material and Methods section and <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0129225#pone.0129225.g003" target="_blank">Fig 3C</a> on Results section).</p

Forest remnants in the studied area, southern region of Brazil (forest remnants map was provided by SOS Mata Atlantica and Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais 2008).

<p>Forest remnants in the studied area, southern region of Brazil (forest remnants map was provided by SOS Mata Atlantica and Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais 2008).</p