Foster Brown

Woodwell Climate Research Center | WHRC

The tropical forest carbon sink is known to be drought sensitive, but it is unclear which forests are the most vulnerable to extreme events. Forests with hotter and drier baseline conditions may be protected by prior adaptation, or more vulnerable because they operate closer to physiological limits. Here we report that forests in drier South Americ...

RESUMO Áreas protegidas desempenham um importante papel na redução do desmatamento na Amazônia e na atenuação das mudanças climáticas. Este artigo teve como objetivo mapear e analisar a dinâmica de uso e cobertura da terra na área proposta para a Terra Indígena Nawa dentro do Parque Nacional da Serra do Divisor (PNSD) entre 1988 e 2018, localizada...

RESUMO Mudanças no uso e cobertura da terra têm alterado os ecossistemas terrestres, e para monitorá-las existem métodos e sistemas de classificação diversos. Este artigo teve como objetivo analisar e comparar os produtos do mapeamento do uso e cobertura da terra do MapBiomas e do estudo de Koga em 2018 no Parque Nacional da Serra do Divisor (PNSD)...

e 6 Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Estrada Dr. Altino Bondensan, 500, Eugênio de Melo, São José dos Campos-SP, cep 12247-016; fabiano.morelli@inpe.br RESUMO A detecção e mapeamento de queimadas e incêndios florestais tem registrados grandes avanços nos últimos anos. Os focos de fogo ativo ainda são a mais importante fonte para identific...

El glosario que se presenta en este libro aporta ajustes contextuales realizados por los autores, definiciones técnicas, legales y científicas de documentos y publicaciones nacionales de Perú, Brasil y Bolivia, así como documentos y publicaciones internacionales de la FAO y la Comunidad Andina sobre el manejo del fuego y, en general, sobre declarac...

Parque Nacional da Serra do Divisor ameaçado. Amazônia Real, Série completa https://bit.ly/3wOGT2o

Aim Water availability is the major driver of tropical forest structure and dynamics. Most research has focused on the impacts of climatic water availability, whereas remarkably little is known about the influence of water table depth and excess soil water on forest processes. Nevertheless, given that plants take up water from the soil, the impacts...

Protected areas have numerous roles (such as biodiversity preservation, the development of scientific research and the sustainable use of natural resources), but they are under threat from political and economic forces. The 837 000-ha Serra do Divisor National Park (SDNP) in the south-western Brazilian Amazon combines the conservation of natural re...

Os movimentos de massa, também conhecidos como deslizamento, escorregamentos e erosões, que causam a desagregação e transporte do solo, ocasionado por fatores naturais como precipitação, terremotos ou ventos. Estes eventos têm impactos ambientais e/ou sociais, dependendo do contexto geográfico que estão inseridos. O presente trabalho teve como obje...

Tree mortality rates and the modes of tree death have recently been extensively investigated in the Amazon. However, efforts to describe these processes have not been well distributed across the basin. No study has yet investigated in depth tree mortality process in the unique low, open, bamboo-dominated forests of southwestern Amazonia, a region w...

Because many environmental threats span national boundaries, transboundary networks have emerged as a form of multi-stakeholder platform to support environmental governance (EG). There are transboundary networks in various ecologically important regions of the world such as the Amazon. However, there remains a need for systematic analyses to adequa...

Este tercer número de la Revista El Mapiense, órgano de comunicación de la Iniciativa Trinacional MAP (Madre de Dios, Perú; Acre, Brasil; Pando, Bolivia), se refiere a la problemática de la gestión del agua en la región, desde diferentes perspectivas, en busca de soluciones sustentables a la problemática de su uso y conservación.

A fumaça pode matar e incapacitar. A baixa qualidade do ar causada pela fumaça oriunda de queimadas urbanas, rurais e florestais na Amazônia gera milhares de mortes prematuras e provoca centenas de milhares de anos de vida com incapacidades na América do Sul. Para reduzir danos ao ambiente e à saúde, normas nacionais e internacionais impõem limites...

Increasing dry season temperatures and length, mega-flood, and drought frequencies, as well as reduced water availability, are some of the observable impacts of climate change in the MAP (Madre de Dios/Peru, Acre/Brazil and Pando/Bolivia) region of the Southwestern Amazon. The MAP region has already experienced a loss of over 10% of intact forests....

Fire is one of the most powerful modifiers of the Amazonian landscape and knowledge about its drivers is needed for planning control and suppression. A plethora of factors may play a role in the annual dynamics of fire frequency, spanning the biophysical, climatic, socioeconomic and institutional dimensions. To uncover the main forces currently at...

Tropical forests are the most diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. While better understanding of these forests is critical for our collective future, until quite recently efforts to measure and monitor them have been largely disconnected. Networking is essential to discover the answers to questions that transcend borders and the horizons of...

Implementation of protected areas is a good strategy to reduce deforestation. Reducing forest cover loss is critical to climate change mitigation, especially in the Amazon. Various types of protected areas have been established to conserve biodiversity and reduce forest cover loss. Deforestation in the Amazon is mostly caused by highway paving. Thi...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20537-x

Neste relato de experiências trazemos uma breve revisão da literatura, em sua maioria de artigos e relatórios técnicos produzidos pelos projetos de Pesquisa MAP-FIRE e Acre-Queimadas sobre a ocorrência e impactos de incêndios florestais na Amazônia, com detalhamento para a região MAP (Madre de Dios - Peru, Acre – Brasil e Pando-Bolívia). Os incêndi...

The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality...

O sudoeste da Amazônia era, até a metade do século 20, predominantemente coberto por uma floresta ombrófila dominada por bambus, com manchas de floresta ombrófila densa. Devido a diversos fatores sócio-econômicos e ondas de ocupação, a região foi sendo transformada e hoje somente 29% do leste acreano apresenta cobertura florestal nativa. Esta mudan...

The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality...

The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality...

Rural communities are important stewards of forests that provide valuable ecological services. This makes them vital allies to outside organizations seeking to support conservation and development initiatives. However, rural communities also have priorities and needs that may not align with the goals of conservation and development projects. This m...

Herein we aimed to test four supervised classifiers to map forest scars caused by agricultural burning activities, and also evaluate time-quality ratio accuracy. In the last decade, while deforestation rates decreased, the number of thermal hotspots increased through Amazonia. Monitoring forest burnings is important to identify and map location and...

Studies of the effects of droughts and fires on the livelihoods of resource-dependent rural smallholders have been reported for the Brazilian Amazon, but less so for other Amazonian countries. To bridge this gap in the literature, our research analyzes how climate-related variability affects different livelihood activities involving management of n...

The sensitivity of tropical forest carbon to climate is a key uncertainty in predicting global climate change. Although short-term drying and warming are known to affect forests, it is unknown if such effects translate into long-term responses. Here, we analyze 590 permanent plots measured across the tropics to derive the equilibrium climate contro...

The sensitivity of tropical forest carbon to climate is a key uncertainty in predicting global climate change. Although short-term drying and warming are known to affect forests, it is unknown if such effects translate into long-term responses. Here, we analyze 590 permanent plots measured across the tropics to derive the equilibrium climate contro...

Report on air quality monitoring in the State of Acre, Brazil, using the PurpleAir sensor network from June to December 2019.

Higher levels of taxonomic and evolutionary diversity are expected to maximize ecosystem function, yet their relative importance in driving variation in ecosystem function at large scales in diverse forests is unknown. Using 90 inventory plots across intact, lowland, terra firme, Amazonian forests and a new phylogeny including 526 angiosperm genera...

Higher levels of taxonomic and evolutionary diversity are expected to maximize ecosystem function, yet their relative importance in driving variation in ecosystem function at large scales in diverse forests is unknown. Using 90 inventory plots across intact, lowland, terra firme, Amazonian forests and a new phylogeny including 526 angiosperm genera...

Wildfires are responsible for great socioeconomic and environmental damages every year. In the Amazon, fire occurrences are associated with land clearing and management practices and during the process of deforestation and agricultural expansion. Fire frequency, on the other hand, is related to the hydrological regime, and it is higher in the end o...

A alteração acelerada do funcionamento da biosfera e a revolução tecnológica criam a necessidade e as ferramentas para tomadas de decisões sobre como cuidar do planeta e da sociedade humana. A Amazônia Sul-ocidental sofre os impactos de um processo global-queima de biomassa e a geração de fumaça-durante 3-5 meses por ano. Via sensores de baixo cust...

Protected areas have many purposes, such as the preservation of biodiversity, the subsistence of traditional populations and the sustainable use of their natural resources. In this context, this article aimed to map and analyze the dynamics of land use and coverage in the northern area of the Serra do Divisor National Park (PNSD) and in its surroun...

O fogo ainda é utilizado em áreas urbanas para queima de lixo, limpeza da vegetação de terrenos e áreas abandonadas. Desta forma, o objetivo deste trabalho foi medir a área detectável de queimadas urbanas entre 2014 e 2018 para o município de Rio Branco, Acre, e a transmissão desde conhecimento para a sociedade através de mídia social. A identifica...

Climate, species composition, and soils are thought to control carbon cycling and forest structure in Amazonian forests. Here, we add a demographics scheme (tree recruitment, growth, and mortality) to a recently developed non-demographic model—the Trait-based Forest Simulator (TFS)—to explore the roles of climate and plant traits in controlling for...

In the last years, the Amazon was hit by events with records in drought extremes. The large wildfires are in synergy with extreme drought events in the Amazon, with consequences for the environment, economy and human health. There is a lack of studies that aim to reduce the risk of this type of disaster in the Amazon. It is the purpose of this work...

A Reserva Extrativista Chico Mendes (RECM) é uma unidade de conservação de uso sustentável que cobre quase um milhão de hectares, localizada no estado do Acre, no sudoeste da Amazônia brasileira. Ela tem 10 mil habitantes estimados. É um exemplo concreto do legado de Chico Mendes e emblemático dos desafios enfrentados pelas unidades de conservação...

Large uncertainties still dominate the hypothesis of an abrupt large-scale shift of the Amazon forest caused by climate change [Amazonian forest dieback (AFD)] even though observational evidence shows the forest and regional climate changing. Here, we assess whether mitigation or adaptation action should be taken now, later, or not at all in light...

Drought-induced wildfires have increased in frequency and extent over the tropics. Yet, the long-term (greater than 10 years) responses of Amazonian lowland forests to fire disturbance are poorly known. To understand post-fire forest biomass dynamics, and to assess the time required for fire-affected forests to recover to pre-disturbance levels, we...

The synergism between climatic change and human action has provided conditions for the occurrence of forest fires in the Amazon. We used annual mapping to reconstruct the history of fire in Brazil’s state of Acre to understand the forest-fire regime over a period of 33 years (1984–2016). The burn-scar index (BSI) derived from the fractions of soil...

The impact of water-related disasters has become more acute in cities of the Amazon Basin. Socio-economic impact assessments have a key role in improving sustainable mitigation projects in order to increase resilience and reduce societal vulnerability. This paper reviews the current state of loss assessments and then explores how to improve estimat...

The Amazon has been experiencing the increase in the intensity and occurrence of extreme weather events. The occurrence of droughts in this region increases the forest susceptibility to fires, with consequences for the environment, economy and human health. The objective of this study was to provide a spatio-temporal analysis of fire use in Acre St...

With the increase of frequency of extreme droughts in Amazonia, there is also an increase in the occurrence of forest fires. There is change in the forest after the fire through the expansion of bamboo in the forests. However, our knowledge about the relation between bambu dominance and forest fire is still limited. The objective of this study was...

This article reports on the approach of a research group to communicate alerts for the 2016 drought in soutwestern Amazonia. The Land Use and Global Change Studies Section (Setem) of the Federal University of Acre has helped provide early warnings for climate extremes during the past 11 years when southwestern Amazonia faced three severe droughts i...

Uso de ferramentas de SIG para acelerar a avaliação de danos durante inundações: O exemplo do bairro da Cadeia Velha, Rio Branco, Acre, Brasil em 2015.

Forests of Southwestern Amazon, beside their exuberant biodiversity, are home of extractivists communities. The current high levels of fragmentation and climate anomalies (e.g. drought and flood) are challenges to guarantee forest conservation and the sustainable use of forest products by Extractivists communities. Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (...

We remeasured six permanent plots inSouthwestern Amazonia and present the preliminary results of 10-20 year of forest dynamics.

Reportagem Especial | Fale Conosco | Expediente | Leitor Repórter Faça uma busca Rio Branco, 16/05/2017 Os incêndios florestais recentes e a mudança de paradigma Postado em 10/10/2016 23:31:08 Sonaira Silva e Foster Brown Tweetar 0 Desde 2005, a ideiade que as florestas desta parte da Amazônianão pudessem queimar foi colocada em cheque. As suas car...

Reportagem Especial | Fale Conosco | Expediente | Leitor Repórter Faça uma busca Rio Branco, 16/05/2017 O Acre tem muita floresta? Exemplo do leste do Acre Postado em 15/05/2017 23:25:47 Foster Brown e Sonaira Souza da Silva Tweetar 0 O Acre tem muita ou pouca floresta? Quase dez anos atrás foi publicado no Jornal A Gazeta um artigo fazendo uma per...

Tree species in tropical forests provide economically important goods and ecosystem services. In submontane forests of southwestern Amazonia, we investigated the degree to which tree species important for subsistence and trade contribute to aboveground carbon storage (AGC). We used 41 1-hectare plots to determine the species abundance, basal area,...

Este estudo teve por objetivo detalhar aspectos climáticos relacionados ao período de seca que acarretou nos grandes incêndios ocorridos no Acre, durante a estação seca (junho a setembro) de 2005. Um aspecto original deste estudo foi a avaliação da variabilidade climática sub-sazonal. A avaliação dos padrões anômalos de variáveis climáticas relevan...

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs depend on consistent environmental monitoring methodologies for measuring, reporting and verification. The case of carbon PES programs is instructive: land cover estimates are crucial for environmental monitoring efforts, but they require a consistent estimation method. Such consistency is however like...

Fire is one of the main factors directly impacting Amazonian forest biomass and dynamics. Because of Amazonia's large geographical extent, remote sensing techniques are required for comprehensively assessing forest fire impacts at the landscape level. In this context, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) stands out as a technology capable of retriev...

The seasonal climate drivers of the carbon cycle in tropical forests remain poorly known, although these forests account for more carbon assimilation and storage than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Based on a unique combination of seasonal pan-tropical data sets from 89 experimental sites (68 include aboveground wood productivity measurements and...

The seasonal climate drivers of the carbon cycle in tropical forests remain poorly known, although these forests account for more carbon assimilation and storage than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Based on a unique combination of seasonal pan-tropical data sets from 89 experimental sites (68 include aboveground wood productivity measurements and...

A região Norte é a segunda no Brasil com a maior taxa de incidência de doenças diarreicas em crianças menores de 5 anos. O objetivo deste estudo foi investigar a relação entre chuva e nível do rio, principalmente durante a estação chuvosa, com a taxa de incidência da referida doença em uma bacia no sudoeste da Amazônia. Estimativas de chuva e nível...

The aim of this study was to investigate climatological aspects (characterization) in seasonal potential evapotranspiration east of Acre, with the unit of study is the city of Rio Branco, capital of the State, considering a period of 34 years from 1980 to 2013, from monthly data from a weather station in a conventional surface. The methodology was...

The complexity of multi-dimensional climate, environmental and human health information complicates bringing together scientists, civil society, and decision makers to provide adequate mitigation and adaptation options for the consequences of global environmental change. To provide an effective pathway to conciliate (integrate) these datasets, we p...

Forests in the southwest flank of the Amazon are known by persistent dominance of Bamboos. It is still not well understood how species of Bamboos interact with fire, but there is a strong suggestion that fire favours the spread and colonization of Bamboos species. On this work we aimed to compare burned and unburned forested areas dominated by Bamb...

The objective of this study was to investigate climatological seasonal and interanual variability of the reference evapotranspiration (ETo) for the state of Acre, whose studies units the Rio Branco municipalities, Tarauacá and Cruzeiro do Sul considering a period of 30 years, from monthly meteorological stations data. The methodology was held, firs...