Artificial forests threaten the biodiversity of the Pampas

By Karina Toledo
Agência FAPESP – The Amazon Forest in such states as Mato Grosso and Pará is being transformed into pastureland. However, the problem is the opposite in Rio Grande do Sul: the field vegetation of the Pampas – which for years has existed harmoniously with cattle rearing – is being decimated to make way for forests planted by humans.
Although the visual impact of the destruction could be greater in Amazonia, anyone who considers that the biological loss in the Pampas Biome is smaller is mistaken. According to a study coordinated by Professor Ilsi Boldrini of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), a vegetation diversity is concentrated in the southern region that is three times greater than that of the forests when the area occupied by each is taken into consideration… >>Continue Reading<<

Source and Photo: FAPESP, 24rh April, 2013
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Forest ecology: Splinters of the Amazon

By Jeff Tollefson
Nature – Ecologist Thomas Lovejoy tucks his trousers into his socks with a casual warning about chiggers and then hikes off into the Amazon jungle. Shaded by a tall canopy and dense with ferns and underbrush, the old-growth forest looks healthy, but Lovejoy knows better. Three decades ago, the surrounding forest was mowed down and torched as part of a research project, and the effects have spread like a cancer deep into the uncut area. Large trees have perished. The spider monkeys have moved out, as have the army-ant colonies, and many of the birds that depend on them.

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Why action on forests now is essential to all our futures

By Bharrat Jagdeo
The Guardian - While forests once provided subsistence for local people, for generations clearing forested land has also been good for global business, providing immediate food security for the world. Put simply, forests have been worth more dead than alive.

As populations grow, emerging and industrialised countries are looking to the three great world forest regions – the Three Basins of the Congo, the Amazon and south-east Asia – for their growing resource needs. The economic imperative to acquire and clear more land increases daily as demand for food and commodities grows. More than half of the global forest loss has occurred in the Three Basins. But world food production needs standing forests not felled trees.

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Palm Monoculture Bad for Birds

By Andrew M. Sugden

Science - The conversion of tropical forest to oil palm plantations has rapidly increased over the past decade, predominantly in Southeast Asia, where such cultivation now dominates over 2 million hectares. Substantial biodiversity loss accompanies such conversion, but little is known of the ecology of the resulting landscape. Azhar et al.’s survey of bird faunas in plantations and logged swamp forest in Malaysia shows that guilds were affected in different ways. Notably, raptors were more abundant in plantations than in logged forest, whereas the reverse was true for insectivores and granivores. Patterns within plantations were also influenced by the management regime (e.g., smallholding versus estate) and proximity to forest. Edwards et al. surveyed the functional diversity—a measure incorporating foraging, morphology, and behavior—of bird faunas across habitat gradients (from plantation to logged and primary forests) in Borneo. Functional diversity was similar between logged and primary forest but greatly reduced in plantations, with just a few generalist species filling a wide range of functional roles. These studies demonstrate that continued conversion from logged forest to oil palm plantation will lead to further losses of species and functional diversity.

Source: Science, 3th May, 2013
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Agriculture Innovations and Investments Critical to Meeting Future Food Demand

Agree - “The Chicago Council on Global Affairs today released a report that examines the implications of the increasingly influential roles of global business, Brazil, China, and India in agricultural research and the limited national research capacity of developing countries. It makes the case that greater international collaboration and investment in research is needed to safeguard productivity gains made over the past half century and meet future food demand. The independent study, Agricultural Innovation: The United States in a Changing Global Reality, is authored by University of Minnesota researchers, Philip G. Pardey and Jason M. Beddow. It concludes that most Sub-Saharan African countries could potentially access at least 25 times their locally produced agricultural knowledge by adapting and adopting scientific breakthroughs produced in other countries. “A new way of thinking about agricultural investments and innovation must be embraced to take advantage of such opportunities to increase agricultural production and increase the efficiencies of investment at all levels, from the local to the international level,” said Pardey. “A more international approach is urgently needed, as the lag between research investments and commercial adoption is extremely lengthy.” Pardey and Beddow present new measures of accumulated knowledge stocks by country and the potential for this knowledge to “spill over” and benefit other countries. These new measures of global spillover potential can help guide research and development decisions in the United States and globally. “The current system does not adequately take advantage of the vast stocks of knowledge that exist around the world that could be adapted to local environments elsewhere,” said Beddow.”

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How agroforestry schemes can improve food security in developing countries

By Caspar van Vark
The Guardian - Agroforesty - the integration of trees and shrubs with crops and livestock systems – has strong potential in addressing problems of food insecurity in developing countries. Done well, it allows producers to make the best use of their land, can boost field crop yields, diversify income, and increase resilience to climate change.

To date, the uptake of agroforestry has been constrained partly because it has lacked a natural ‘home’ in policy space, but that may be changing thanks to a growing body of evidence of what it can achieve, and how to make it work. The FAO last month published a guide to advancing agroforestry on the policy agenda with case studies of best practice, and is due to hold a conference on forests and food security and nutrition in May.

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Impacts of changes in land use on bodies of water

By Elton Alisson
Agência FAPESP – The changes in land use that are currently taking place in most of the world, with the greatest intensity in the tropical regions – caused by population increases and the demand for food and energy –, have had numerous impacts on the chemical composition and biodiversity of bodies of water.
In Brazil, groups of researchers in partnership with colleagues from other countries have studied some of the alterations in rivers and lakes due to the expansion of sugarcane and soybean cultivation and the replacement of forests by pastureland.

Renewable energy

By Vania de Souza Andrade
Biomassa & Bioenergia - The Rio +20 emphasized subject that has been much discussed recently by governments. With the inclusion on the agenda of the meeting the topic of renewable energy, the world is forced to discuss viable alternatives and implement effectively in practice initiatives to encourage the use of clean energy sources. The most recent example that has news was the Japan, which has approved a plan to encourage the production of clean energy investment that should result in at least $ 9.6 billion in new facilities with generating capacity of 3.2 gigawatts. Such policy incentives for the production of energy Renewable worldwide have been object of study by KPMG, which raised and compared information subsidies by 15 countries, such as feed-in tariff (mechanism of stimulating the production of renewable energy),

Brazil develops global climate change model

By Elton Alisson
Agência FAPESP – Few countries today play a leading role in scientific advances in climate modeling. Most of these countries – the United States, for example – are in the Northern Hemisphere. Australia was the only country in the Southern Hemisphere with this capacity. However, after developing its own climate models for 30 years, the country abandoned its efforts in the area, opting to import and help to improve a model developed by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Great Britain.

Now, Brazil has filled the void left by Australia, joining the select group of countries capable of developing a model, validating it and simulating global climate changes.

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Source and Photo: Agência FAPESP, 20th March, 2013
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SGB and Embrapa formalize strategic partnership in research to develop jatropha in Brazil

Biomassa & Bioenergia – GBS, Inc. (SG Biofuels) and Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) entered into a strategic research agreement to promote the development of jatropha as an alternative source of renewable energy in Brazil. Headquartered in San Diego, USA, GBS is an energy crop company that provides high-performance solutions for the markets of renewable energy, biomass and chemicals. It is a leader in its segment and offers the largest and most diverse library of genetic material of Jatropha in the world. The company has been working on this development for five years, combining platforms breeding and genomics.
“By aggregating our efforts for initiatives of an institution of the Brazilian Government