MUDANÇAS CLIMÁTICAS: DESAFIOS E OPORTUNIDADES PARA A CONSERVAÇÃO DA BIODIVERSIDADE BRASILEIRA

A realidade das mudanças climáticas pelas quais o planeta está passando é inequívoca, assim como a influência humana nesse processo. O Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudanças Climáticas das Nacões Unidas prevê mudanças climáticas substanciais para a região Neotropical. De fato, os impactos dessas mudanças climáticas sobre a biodiversidade da região já estão sendo sentidos: colapso de ecossistemas de corais no Caribe, retração de glaciares nos Andes e eventos extremos de seca na Amazônia. Embora haja um corpo substancial de conhecimento em torno dos possíveis impactos das mudanças climáticas sobre as formações florestais brasileiras, sobretudo as amazônicas, estudos dos impactos sobre elementos da biodiversidade do país são praticamente inexistentes. Nos últimos 20 anos foram publicados apenas dois artigos científicos em periódicos indexados na base do Thompson Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Essa lacuna de conhecimento impossibilita a elaboração de quaisquer estratégias de adaptação às mudanças climáticas visando à conservação da biodiversidade brasileira. A comunidade científica e as agências de fomento à pesquisa, portanto, devem começar a priorizar estudos dessa natureza. O Brasil, no entanto, não deve se concentrar apenas em estratégias de ‘adaptação', pois existe grande potencial no país para ações de ‘mitigação' das mudanças climáticas em andamento. Apesar da sua matriz energética limpa, o país figura entre os maiores emissores mundiais de gases de efeito estufa, devido às enormes emissões associadas ao desmatamento. Uma questão de primeira ordem é a histórica oposição do país à incorporação de ‘desmatamento evitado' como um dos Mecanismos de Desenvolvimento Limpo do Protocolo de Kyoto. É importante que a comunidade científica brasileira ligada à conservação participe ativamente desse debate, cujas conseqüências para a biodiversidade são bastante graves

Patterns of Vertebrate Diversity and Protection in Brazil

Most conservation decisions take place at national or finer spatial scales. Providing useful information at such decision-making scales is essential for guiding the practice of conservation. Brazil is one of the world’s megadiverse countries, and consequently decisions about conservation in the country have a disproportionate impact on the survival of global biodiversity. For three groups of terrestrial vertebrates (birds, mammals, and amphibians), we examined geographic patterns of diversity and protection in Brazil, including that of endemic, small-ranged, and threatened species. To understand potential limitations of the data, we also explored how spatial bias in collection localities may influence the perceived patterns of diversity. The highest overall species richness is in the Amazon and Atlantic Forests, while the Atlantic Forest dominates in terms of country endemics and small-ranged species. Globally threatened species do not present a consistent pattern. Patterns for birds were similar to overall species richness, with higher concentrations of threatened species in the Atlantic Forest, while mammals show a more generalized pattern across the country and a high concentration in the Amazon. Few amphibians are listed as threatened, mostly in the Atlantic Forest. Data deficient mammals occur across the country, concentrating in the Amazon and southeast Atlantic Forest, and there are no data deficient birds in Brazil. In contrast, nearly a third of amphibians are data deficient, widespread across the country, but with a high concentration in the far southeast. Spatial biases in species locality data, however, possibly influence the perceived patterns of biodiversity. Regions with low sampling density need more biological studies, as do the many data deficient species. All biomes except the Amazon have less than 3% of their area under full protection. Reassuringly though, rates of protection do correlate with higher biodiversity, including higher levels of threatened and small-ranged species. Our results indicate a need for expanded formal protection in Brazil, especially in the Atlantic forest, and with an emphasis on fully protected areas

Entomological surveys of Lutzomyia flaviscutellata and other vectors of cutaneous leishmaniasis in municipalities with records of Leishmania amazonensis within the Bragança region of Pará State, Brazil.

In southeast Amazon, Lutzomyia (Nyssomyia) flaviscutellata is the incriminated vector of Leishmania (Leishmania) amazonensis, a causative agent of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL). The optimal methods for surveying Lu. flaviscutellata were investigated in the Bragança region, northeast Pará State, Brazil, selected for the presence of Le. amazonensis. The performances of modified Disney traps and CDC light traps were compared in four ecotopes within and around four village transects during the wet and dry seasons. The physiological age of female sand flies was estimated and natural infection by flagellates was evaluated by dissection. Disney traps were better for detecting the presence of Lu. flaviscutellata, while CDC traps performed well for detecting Lutzomyia (Nyssomyia) antunesi, suspected vector of Leishmania lindenbergi. The former was more abundant during the wet season, when female flies were naturally infected with Le. amazonensis. These findings identified the environments of local transmission. In order to improve surveys of Lu. flaviscutellata as part of integrated epidemiological surveillance of CL, our recommendations include focusing vector surveys with Disney traps on forest fragments where people work, during the seasonal peak of the vector. Further field studies are required to make model-based predictions of seasonal variations in the vectorial capacity of vector populations

Trading deforestation - Why the legality of forest-risk commodities is insufficient

This dataset refers to the summary of unprotected native vegetation and carbon stocks per municipality in Brazil. Unprotected means native vegetation areas and spatially-linked carbon stocks present at farms with surplus of legal reserves according to the Brazilian Forest Code.Additional funding sources: Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) (Grant QZA-21/0156) (C W). The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant 7703.01) (C W). World Wildlife Fund Brazil (Science Program's and Public Policy's institutional budget) (M N F, R S T V, M M S E, G R L). Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola (IMAFLORA) (Institutional Budget) (V G F). Universidade de São Paulo—USP (Institutional Budget) (G S). Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) (Institutional Budget) (R R)

Effects of Brazil's political crisis on the science needed for biodiversity conservation

The effects of Brazil’s political crisis on science funding necessary for biodiversity conservation are likely to be global. Brazil is not only the world’s most biodiverse nation, it is responsible for the greater part of the Amazon forest, which regulates the climate and provides rain to much of southern South America. Brazil was a world leader in satellite monitoring of land-use change, in-situ biodiversity monitoring, reduction in tropical-forest deforestation, protection of indigenous lands, and a model for other developing nations. Coordinated public responses will be necessary to prevent special-interest groups from using the political crisis to weaken science funding, environmental legislation and law enforcement. Keywords: Brazil, biodiversity, climate change, governance, fundin

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Combined kinematic and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich measurements from BOSS CMASS and LOWZ halos

The scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off the free-electron gas in galaxies and clusters leaves detectable imprints on high resolution CMB maps: the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects (tSZ and kSZ respectively). We use combined microwave maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) DR5 and Planck in combination with the CMASS and LOWZ galaxy catalogs from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS DR10 and DR12), to study the gas associated with these galaxy groups. Using individual reconstructed velocities, we perform a stacking analysis and reject the no-kSZ hypothesis at 6.5$\sigma$, the highest significance to date. This directly translates into a measurement of the electron number density profile, and thus of the gas density profile. Despite the limited signal to noise, the measurement shows at high significance that the gas density profile is more extended than the dark matter density profile, for any reasonable baryon abundance (formally $>90\sigma$ for the cosmic baryon abundance). We simultaneously measure the tSZ signal, i.e. the electron thermal pressure profile of the same CMASS objects, and reject the no-tSZ hypothesis at 10$\sigma$. We combine tSZ and kSZ measurements to estimate the electron temperature to 20% precision in several aperture bins, and find it comparable to the virial temperature. In a companion paper, we analyze these measurements to constrain the gas thermodynamics and the properties of feedback inside galaxy groups. We present the corresponding LOWZ measurements in this paper, ruling out a null kSZ (tSZ) signal at 2.9 (13.9)$\sigma$, and leave their interpretation to future work. Our stacking software ThumbStack is publicly available at https://github.com/EmmanuelSchaan/ThumbStack and directly applicable to future Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 data.Comment: Accepted in Physical Review D, Editors' Suggestio