•Maranhão state lose 76 % of its original Amazon forest cover (75,895 km2).•Only 35 % of forest remnants correspond to core areas (8302 km2).•End of violence against indigenous people depends on ...adequate forest protection.•Ecosystem services and human well-being depends on forest restoration.
The year 2019 in Brazil was marked by environmental setbacks, which catalyzed the increase of illegal deforestation and fire rates in the Brazilian Amazon. In the Amazon region of Maranhão state, original forest cover diminished from 25 % (24,700 km2) in 2016 to 24 % (23,967 km2) in 2019, and 6,038 km2 of remaining forests were degraded by fires and/or illegal logging – processes related to high levels of violence against indigenous and rural communities. Almost half of all deforested areas in the region (36,060 km2) are considered a global restoration hotspot, however secondary vegetation remains unprotected and 8,294 km2 were cleared between 2014 and 2018. Due to uncontrolled deforestation and fragmentation, Maranhão has no more forest core areas (outside protected areas) with the minimum size to ensure sustainable forest management practices for timber production. New policies at the state level must promote old-growth and secondary forest conservation and restoration. However, the trends point to the opposite direction: the Ecological-Economic Zoning (ZEE) allows the reduction of forest protection and the State Forest Policy reinforces federal legislation setbacks. The Amazon region of Maranhão state has forest aptitude, and forest and agroforestry product chains would bring social and environmental benefits, making them the best opportunity for sustainable economic development in the region. Therefore, the forest must be re-planted for the benefit of people and nature.
The restoration and reforestation of 12 million hectares of forests by 2030 are amongst the leading mitigation strategies for reducing carbon emissions within the Brazilian Nationally Determined ...Contribution targets assumed under the Paris Agreement. Understanding the dynamics of forest cover, which steeply decreased between 1985 and 2018 throughout Brazil, is essential for estimating the global carbon balance and quantifying the provision of ecosystem services. To know the long-term increment, extent, and age of secondary forests is crucial; however, these variables are yet poorly quantified. Here we developed a 30-m spatial resolution dataset of the annual increment, extent, and age of secondary forests for Brazil over the 1986-2018 period. Land-use and land-cover maps from MapBiomas Project (Collection 4.1) were used as input data for our algorithm, implemented in the Google Earth Engine platform. This dataset provides critical spatially explicit information for supporting carbon emissions reduction, biodiversity, and restoration policies, enabling environmental science applications, territorial planning, and subsidizing environmental law enforcement.
Forest restoration has attracted the attention of different organizations, investors, and donors with the launch of the UN Decade for Ecosystems Restoration (2021–2030), along with climate and ...biodiversity commitments. Restoration can address many of mankind's challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, water security, and poverty. In the Brazilian Amazon, the ~28 million inhabitants are among the most vulnerable of the country, and this has only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, millions of hectares are suitable for forest restoration. The growing demand for large-scale forest restoration projects have been prioritizing biophysical objectives (e.g., number of trees, hectares of land, and carbon) while it should be prioritizing the local people's well-being and a fair transition to a sustainable economy based on forest services' recovery. Nonetheless, many challenges need to be overcome to realize this potential. Amazonian states need to control illegality, enforce the existing policies and promote innovative ones to halt deforestation and enable large-scale restoration. Better governance and social engagement are urgently needed but depend upon, recognition of indigenous peoples and local communities' rights, needs, and knowledge. Forest restoration represents an opportunity for the emergence of a more inclusive development paradigm, much needed in the Amazon region, especially in the post COVID-19 world.
•Forest restoration might be the key to an inclusive development paradigm and a fair COVID-19 recovery in the Amazon.•Combining ecological and socioeconomic co-benefits is imperative for the Amazon restoration.•Ignoring the social dimension of restoration may lead to the failure of restoration interventions.•Strategic investments to strengthen community organization and build local capacities are paramount.
•Leguminous residue favors abundant soil engineers, predators and litter transformers.•Leguminous residue with a high C/N ratio extended essential ecosystem functions.•Soil macrofauna and soil ...residue cover may increase efficiency of tropical agrosystems.•Fast-growing leguminous plants can increase soil acidity and decrease soil macrofauna diversity.
The potential advantages of positive interactions between the functional group components of the soil macrofauna and soil residue cover may increase the sustainability and efficiency of tropical agrosystems. The objective of this study was to link the ecological requirements of soil macrofauna with their impacts on the principal chemical and physical indicators of a hardsetting soil from a humid tropical region. The soil of a no-tillage system covered with legumes tree residues was subjected to the following treatments: Leucaena+Clitoria (L+C); Leucaena+Gliricidia (L+G); Leucaena+Acacia (L+A); Gliricidia+Clitoria (G+C); Gliricidia+Acacia (G+A); and a control with bare soil (BS) and no legumes. The application of leguminous tree residue with a high C/N ratio (G+A) extended essential ecosystem functions in the no-tillage agrosystem due to the favoring abundant functional groups, including soil engineers, predators and litter transformers. Litter transformers are associated with mulching effects that enhance multiple attributes, such as water infiltration, soil porosity, soil density, the litter carbon stock, the free light fraction (FLF) and total organic C. The use of fast-growing leguminous trees can increase soil acidity and decrease soil macrofauna diversity, but the harmful effects of leguminous tree cover are minor relative to the environmental benefits.
► Traditional slash-and-burn (T) land preparation degrades soil properties. ► Fire-free land preparation include chop-and-mulch (C) with or not fallow enrichment. ► Effect of (T) and alternative land ...preparation (A) on soil were compared. ► In cropland, (A) increased soil nutrient stocks when preceded by enriched fallow. ► In pastures, (C) alone showed lower beneficial effect on soil properties.
Over a century, subsistence agriculture has been practiced in the Brazilian Amazon, using slash-and-burn as a traditional land clearing technique. However, fire clearing leads to nutrient losses, and the increasing demographic pressure reduces the duration of the fallow period, threatening the system sustainability. The chop-and-mulch land clearing method, combined or not with legume-enriched fallow, is a promising alternative technique as the retention of organic residues upon land clearance of fallow could promote soil fertility. The aim of this study is to assess the effect of fire-free land preparation on soil physicochemical properties by comparing the effects of traditional slash-and-burn with (i) chop-and mulch with enriched fallow in croplands and (ii) chop-and-mulch without enriched fallow in pastures. The chop-and-mulch of a legume-enriched fallow conserved soil bulk density, and significantly increased nutrient concentrations and organic matter content compared to the burnt cropland and the control forest. In the pastures, the use of chop-and-mulch of a non-enriched fallow had less impact on soil physical and chemical properties, excepted on water retention capacity and total P stock. Land clearing of fallows by chop-and-mulch, especially when enriched with legumes could significantly improve agriculture sustainability in the region and reduce the pressure on primary forests.
The identification and modelling of ligands into macromolecular models is important for understanding molecule's function and for designing inhibitors to modulate its activities. We describe new ...algorithms for the automated building of ligands into electron density maps in crystal structure determination. Location of the ligand-binding site is achieved by matching numerical shape features describing the ligand to those of density clusters using a “fragmentation-tree” density representation. The ligand molecule is built using two distinct algorithms exploiting free atoms with inter-atomic connectivity and Metropolis-based optimisation of the conformational state of the ligand, producing an ensemble of structures from which the final model is derived. The method was validated on several thousand entries from the Protein Data Bank. In the majority of cases, the ligand-binding site could be correctly located and the ligand model built with a coordinate accuracy of better than 1 Å. We anticipate that the method will be of routine use to anyone modelling ligands, lead compounds or even compound fragments as part of protein functional analyses or drug design efforts.
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► Crystallographic ligands are automatically identified using a “fragmentation tree”. ► The binding site of drug-like ligands is accurately located in 96% of cases. ► Hybrid modelling enables accurate ligand building.
Resumo O "Mosaico Gurupi" está localizado entre o oeste do Maranhão e o leste do Pará, na Área de Endemismo Belém, que embora seja a região mais desmatada do Bioma Amazônico no Brasil, preserva uma ...diversidade cultural e biológica superlativa. O mosaico engloba seis Terras Indígenas (Alto Turiaçu, Awá, Caru, Arariboia, Rio Pindaré e Alto Rio Guamá) e uma Unidade de Conservação (Reserva Biológica do Gurupi). Essas áreas protegidas conservam os principais remanescentes florestais da região e garantem a manutenção de serviços ecossistêmicos essenciais aos dois estados, principalmente de regulação hidrológica. No entanto, essa região vive sob ameaças constantes de desmatamento e de degradação pela extração ilegal de madeira, e por incêndios criminosos. Os povos indígenas e lideranças comunitárias da região são vitimados pela violência associada a tais crimes. Para promover a conservação e a restauração dessas áreas, uma rede formada por diversas instituições indígenas e não indígenas vem trabalhando em conjunto para o reconhecimento do "Mosaico Gurupi" pelo Ministério do Meio Ambiente. A proposta aqui apresentada inclui o mosaico em questão e o Corredor Ecológico da Amazônia Maranhense, que irá conectar os principais remanescentes florestais da região, por meio da restauração das matas ciliares ao longo dos rios Buriticupu, Pindaré e Zutiua. A conformação do mosaico visa integrar esforços para a proteção territorial, a restauração florestal e o fortalecimento da cultura e educação indígena; o que poderá converter a região mais ameaçada da Amazônia em um exemplo de conservação e sustentabilidade econômica e social por meio da promoção da restauração florestal.
Tropical forests provide essential environmental services to human well-being. In the world, Brazil has the largest continuous area of these forests. However, in the state of Maranhão, in the eastern ...Amazon, only 24% of the original forest cover remains. We integrated and analyzed active fires, burned area, land use and land cover, rainfall, and surface temperature datasets to understand forest fragmentation and forest fire dynamics from a remote sensing approach. We found that forest cover in the Maranhão Amazon region had a net reduction of 31,302 km2 between 1985 and 2017, with 63% of losses occurring in forest core areas. Forest edges extent was reduced by 38%, while the size of isolated forest patches increased by 239%. Forest fires impacted, on average, around 1031 ± 695 km2 year−1 of forest edges between 2003 and 2017, the equivalent of 60% of the total burned forest in this period. Our results demonstrated that forest fragmentation is an important factor controlling temporal and spatial variability of forest fires in the eastern Amazon region. Thus, both directly and indirectly, forest fragmentation can compromise biodiversity and carbon stocks in this Amazon region.
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