With the increase in deforestation associated with the need to reconcile conservation and food production, agricultural mosaics are of great importance in maintaining biodiversity. This study aimed to compare the shade-tolerant plants diversity partition pattern and the conservation value (CV) presented by land-use types found in three vertical strata (upper, middle, and lower) of six agricultural mosaics in the eastern Amazon. Additionally, we hypothesized that agricultural mosaics with lower forest cover, with lower heterogeneity of land-uses, and drier areas have lower shade-tolerant plants diversity, and CV of land-use types. Plant surveys were carried out in family farming mosaics with fixed plots; a matrix of species abundance per plot was set up for each mosaic and stratum. Additive partition and absolute contribution analyze were applied to each matrix; and CV of the land-uses for gamma richness was calculated. Factors were tested using generalized linear models and simple linear regression. Our results indicate that there is a diversity pattern that is repeated in the strata and agricultural mosaics. Beta diversity, especially among land-use types, is the one that most contributes to the diversity. Habitat heterogeneity is very important for the conservation of shade-tolerant species, but it is not the number of different land-use types but what these land-uses are. Land-uses with low CV do not add diversity to the mosaic. Consequently, the quality of the environmental matrix is very important. This information will be useful in providing baseline data on the management of agricultural mosaics in the eastern Amazon.

The methodological framework for two educational materials prior to the publication of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is analyzed. Conceptual modeling shows the interconnections among SDG 1, 2, 4, 12, and 15. The first project is the PROBIO-Environmental Education teaching material for biodiversity conservation, coordinated by the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment. A set of 45 pairs of illustrated educational sheets was produced in 2006 based on Paulo Freire’s dialogic problem-posing education. Students analyzed real, local socio-environmental conflicts and their respective solutions for Brazilian biomes and priority issues, connecting environmental conservation, education, and reducing poverty and hunger. The second project was focused on the conservation of the babassu palm tree (Attalea speciosa) in the Brazilian Amazon. An educational kit containing games related to the species and remote sensing with a teacher’s manual was created, and several educational activities involving stakeholders and schools were performed within the research project (started in 2013). The two educational materials are relevant in the context of a just and sustainable transition aiming to (a) promote knowledge sharing as a primary tool for social justice, empowerment, and socially engaged research; (b) disseminate actions and projects and bring researchers and civil society together for a just and sustainable transition in land use and occupation and for the wellbeing of the population; (c) parametrize future actions and re-interpret past actions within the conceptual framework of the 2030 Agenda to promote integration across the SDGs towards a just and sustainable transition.

Noting that humans are affecting the Earth’s envelopes, with geosciences becoming inseparable from social sciences and humanities, and acknowledging the increasing use of the word Anthropocene, the authors of this paper explore the possibility of a scientific paradigm shift. (1) Since the 17th century, modern science has developed in a context of naturalist worlding that favors its hegemony over other modes of existence and its paradigm of a quest to define the laws of nature. (2) Various manifestations attest to the emergence of a paradigm of knowledge diversity and the unravelling of the naturalist worlding. (3) The current boom in participatory science is a sign of this paradigm shift: through the fundamental changes to the Earth System that refer to it, the Anthropocene forces science to move towards action and interact with a society involved in adapting to changes and concerned with the threats to its territory’s habitability.

Dados bióticos e abióticos foram integrados para identificar áreas de ocorrência de babaçu, tendo sido observado à ocorrência preferencial dos indivíduos em áreas de uso agrícola. O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar e caracterizar as áreas potenciais de ocorrência do babaçu, a partir da utilização de técnicas de sensoriamento remoto e de geoprocessamento na bacia do rio Cocal. A metodologia de mapeamento das áreas potenciais de babaçu apresenta as seguintes etapas: (a) confecção do mapa de uso e cobertura do solo a partir do processamento digital da imagem ASTER; (b) confecção do mapa geomorfológico a partir da análise do Modelo Digital de Terreno e dos mapas derivados; e (c) integração dos mapas de uso e cobertura do solo e geomorfologia para determinar as áreas potenciais de ocorrência de babaçu. Essa metodologia proposta para identificar áreas potenciais de ocorrência de babaçu apresenta uma alternativa rápida para se fazer uma seleção preliminar e reduzir o esforço amostral para identificação das áreas potenciais de ocorrência do babaçu. Podemos observar que 31,36% da área total da bacia são áreas potenciais de ocorrência. Os resultados permitem dizer que o fator que mais influencia a densidade do babaçu é o tipo de manejo aplicado pelo agricultor. Dependendo do tipo de manejo a diversidade e a concentração do babaçu na bacia é eliminada ou aumentada.

O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar a influência da estrutura da paisagem sobre a estrutura da vegetação, de acordo com a escala de investigação. O estudo foi desenvolvido no Assentamento Agroextrativista Praialta Piranheira, localizado em Nova Ipixuna, PA. Foi utilizado inventário florístico (variáveis da vegetação) e imagem de satélite (métricas da paisagem). As parcelas foram espacializadas em buffers com circunferências de 100, 200, 300 e 500 m. Observou-se influência das métricas da paisagem, em especial da quantidade de habitat florestal, sobre a estrutura da vegetação e a necessidade de se selecionar as métricas mais adequadas ao tipo de estudo realizado.

ABSTRACT Attalea speciosa (babassu) is a native palm of the primary forest from Amazonian and Cerrado biomes, and has multiple economic and cultural uses. However, this palm can become dominant in open areas, with a long-term persistence in the community. The objective of this study was to compare the population structure and morphology of babassu in three habitat types characterizing forest succession: primary forest, pasture, and babaçual (babassu-dominated secondary forest). For this purpose, we monitored 6,333 individuals for three years at six life stages in 11 sites with 25 plots located in PA-Benfica, Itupiranga-Pará, Brazil. The morphological parameters showed differences between secondary environments (pasture and babaçual) and primary forests, suggesting that this species has a high capacity for phenotypic plasticity. The inverse J-shaped distribution was observed only in primary forests, with the density of all stages constant along the whole study, unlike pastures and babaçual areas. While the density of seedlings is highest in primary forests, stage 4 and 5 juveniles and adults are most numerous in babaçuals. Our results suggest that the higher dominance of A. speciosa in babaçual areas can be associated with the resilience of this species to anthropogenic disturbances.

Alors que la présence de l’homme vient perturber les équilibres des écosystèmes, des solutions doivent être trouvées pour augmenter la production des zones cultivées, tout en diminuant les intrants et la main-d’œuvre, pour nourrir la population humaine en constante augmentation. Le maintien des espèces natives utiles dans les cultures est un moyen d’atteindre cet objectif tout en conservant la biodiversité.

This study aims to evaluate the effect of land cover type, soil properties, and vegetationstructure on fine root biomass, and examined how these factors affect diameter of fine roots. Thestudy was conducted in communities located in the Nova Ipixuna, Parauapebas and Pacajámunicipalities of Pará state. In each area, nine farms were selected; in each farm were sampled fiveplots, totaling 135 plots distributed into nine different types of land cover; at each plot, four soilsamples were collected to quantify the fine roots, vegetation cover was inventoried, and soil wascollected for physical and chemical characterization. Fine roots were separated into four differentclasses. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were done for the soil and vegetation matrix and theywere compared with the fine root biomass PCA through a co-inertia analysis. Variability was highfor fine root biomass data. All land covers exhibited a high proportion of fine roots > 1 mm. The co-inertia analysis showed that the fine root biomass PCA share a common structure with vegetationPCA, with 37% of the variability being explained; however only 9% of the variability was explainedby the soil PCA. Our results highlight the importance of roots with diameters < 2 mm for thequantification of root biomass, whereas the biomass of roots > 2 mm was critical to thedifferentiation among land covers.

La quantité des images satellitaires et des données qui en sont issues sur la biodiversité est telle qu’elle ouvre de nouvelles voies de recherche, pour lesquelles les spécialistes de la biodiversité, de la télédétection et de l’intelligence artificielle doivent collaborer. Cet apport inédit de connaissances constitue un enjeu majeur pour les pays du Sud, où la biodiversité est moins bien répertoriée.

ABSTRACT Shade-tolerant forest species are among the most susceptible to habitat loss in agricultural mosaics, where a variety of croplands is connected to forests at different levels of anthropogenic disturbance. We aimed to evaluate the community similarity of shade-tolerant species among different land use types across agricultural mosaics with different levels of disturbance. The study was conducted in three municipalities in southern and southeastern Pará state, in eastern Amazonia. A multiple-community similarity measure based on the Horn similarity index was used to compare land use types and assess the resilience of shade-tolerant species towards forest loss and disturbance at the landscape level. High shade-tolerant species similarity was found between mature forest fragments that underwent different levels of disturbance in all three agricultural mosaics, but secondary forests had lower similarity with mature forest in the most fragmented and altered mosaic. Shade-tolerant species showed very low density in croplands, but the same group of species seemed to colonize agricultural fields of annual crops and clean pasture, as they showed high community similarity. Another group of species was present in invaded pastures, probably due to the effects of time since land abandonment after woody species colonization. Mixed tree plantations were more similar to mature and secondary forests than other types of croplands. Shade-tolerant species similarity was higher among land use types inserted in agricultural landscapes that maintained conserved forest fragments. Our results suggest that the conservation of mature forests and landscape connectivity are crucial to the maintenance of shade-tolerant species in agricultural mosaics.

This study aims to evaluate the effect of land cover type, soil properties, and vegetation structure on fine root biomass, and examined how these factors affect diameter of fine roots. The study was conducted in communities located in the Nova Ipixuna, Parauapebas and Pacaja municipalities of Para state. In each area, nine farms were selected; in each farm were sampled five plots, totaling 135 plots distributed into nine different types of land cover; at each plot, four soil samples were collected to quantify the fine roots, vegetation cover was inventoried, and soil was collected for physical and chemical characterization. Fine roots were separated into four different classes. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were done for the soil and vegetation matrix and they were compared with the fine root biomass PCA through a co-inertia analysis. Variability was high for fine root biomass data. All land covers exhibited a high proportion of fine roots > 1 mm. The co- inertia analysis showed that the fine root biomass PCA share a common structure with vegetation PCA, with 37/100 of the variability being explained; however only 9/100 of the variability was explained by the soil PCA. Our results highlight the importance of roots with diameters 2 mm was critical to the differentiation among land covers.

Nas pastagens, as árvores e arbustos, remanescentes da floresta original ou oriundas da chuva de sementes, fazem parte das plantas espontâneas; por um lado podem ser consideradas competidoras que enfraquecem a forrageira, por outro lado podem ser responsáveis por uma dinâmica equilibrada, inclusive diminuindo a densidade das competidoras. O objetivo deste estudo foi descrever a estrutura e composição florística das plantas espontâneas e verificar a influência da espécie forrageira e a presença de plantas lenhosas existentes acima do estrato herbáceo, além de investigar a existência ou não de infestação nas pastagens ao longo da BR-156, no município de Oiapoque, estado do Amapá, Brasil. Foram amostrados 31 pastos em propriedades de pequenos agricultores familiares; esses foram categorizadas de acordo com: (1) as espécies forrageiras (Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu e U. humidicola); (2) e a presença de plantas lenhosas (pastos limpos ou sujos) acima do estrato herbáceo. Em cada área, o levantamento florístico foi realizado em um transecto de 1 x 50 m (50 m²), onde todos os indivíduos com 0,10 ≤ altura < 2,0 m foram inventariados. Foram encontradas 90 espécies, com predominância das herbáceas. A composição florística das plantas espontâneas é bem similar àquelas encontradas em outras pastagens da Amazônia, contudo vários pastos mostraram infestação por alguma espécie, tais como Stigmaphyllon convolvulifolium, Stigmaphyllon sinuatum, Borreria verticillata, Hyptis atrorubens, Desmodium barbatum ou Stachytarpheta cayennensis. A estrutura e composição florística das plantas espontâneas não é influenciada nem pela forrageira, nem pela presença de plantas lenhosas existentes acima do estrato herbáceo.

The babassu palm tree (Attalea speciosa Mart. ex Spreng.) is an endemic species of Amazon forests, and has social and economical impact/utility. Deforestation highlights this palm tree in anthropogenic open areas (pastures and cultivated fields). Simultaneously, knowledge concerning the sustainable functioning of the species within these manmade environments is sorely lacking: its life cycle is not well known, and its population dynamics remains unstudied. In this study, our objective was to generate a model of the population dynamics of the babassu palm tree, validated by in situ analysis, to understand how babassu, a forest species, adapts to pastureland and, under certain conditions, becomes invasive. We propose a random matrix model with aggregated variables based on the biological stages of the species as the input. The probabilities of the between-stage transition matrix were modelled using a Dirichlet-multinomial model with a hierarchy taking geographical organization, i.e. transect level, into account. The integration of prior information was formulated through a Bayesian approach. This Bayesian hierarchical matrix model enabled us to demonstrate a bottleneck in the population dynamics and a high year-dependent mortality rate at an early stage.

The babassu palm tree (Attalea speciosa Mart. ex Spreng.) is a species native to the Amazonian rainforest. The invasive nature of this palm tree results in a high density of babassu palm trees with a subsequent decrease in forage crop production. This is a serious problem for local farmers who have tried to resolve it by removing mature palms, seedlings and young individuals. Within these conditions, is coviability between the babassu palm tree and society possible? Our work consisted in developing tools and methods with the aim of producing knowledge and providing answers to this issue within a given territory. To understand the eco-socio-system, we have explored the available knowledge in the literature, produced specific field data, tools and methods such as mathematical modeling (dynamics of the palm tree population) and remote sensing (land use analysis thanks to Landsat high-resolution images and automatic detection of mature palm trees using Pleiades and GeoEye very high-resolution images). This multidisciplinary research in progress has already given us a good overview of the current situation of this eco-socio-system, enabling us to consider the best way to ensure its sustainability.

Ecosystem Service (ES) mapping has become a key tool in scientific assessments of human-nature interactions and is being increasingly used in environmental planning and policy-making. However, the associated epistemic uncertainty underlying these maps often is not systematically considered. This paper proposes a basic procedure to present areas with lower statistical reliability in a map of an ES indicator, the vegetation carbon stock, when extrapolating field data to larger case study regions. To illustrate our approach, we use regression analyses to model the spatial distribution of vegetation carbon stock in the Brazilian Amazon forest in the State of Pará. In our analysis, we used field data measurements for the carbon stock in three study sites as the response variable and various land characteristics derived from remote sensing as explanatory variables for the ES indicator. We performed regression methods to map the carbon stocks and calculated three indicators of reliability: RMSE-Root-mean-square-error, R2-coefficient of determination - from an out-of-sample validation and prediction intervals. We obtained a map of carbon stocks and made explicit its associated uncertainty using a general indicator of reliability and a map presenting the areas where our prediction is the most uncertain. Finally, we highlighted the role of environmental factors on the range of uncertainty. The results have two implications. (1) Mapping prediction interval indicates areas where the map's reliability is the highest. This information increases the usefulness of ES maps in environmental planning and governance. (2) In the case of the studied indicator, the reliability of our prediction is very dependent on land cover type, on the site location and its biophysical, socioeconomic and political characteristics. A better understanding of the relationship between carbon stock and land-use classes would increase the reliability of the maps. Results of our analysis help to direct future research and fieldwork and to prevent decision-making based on unreliable maps.

The original article has been corrected.

Assessing how much management of agricultural landscapes, in addition to protected areas, can offset biodiversity erosion in the tropics is a central issue for conservation that still requires cross-taxonomic and landscape-scale studies. We measured the effects of Amazonia deforestation and subsequent land-use intensification in 6 agricultural areas (landscape scale), where we sampled plants and 4 animal groups (birds, earthworms, fruit flies, and moths). We assessed land-use intensification with a synthetic index based on landscape metrics (total area and relative percentages of land uses, edge density, mean patch density and diversity, and fractal structures at 5 dates from 1990 to 2007). Species richness decreased consistently as agricultural intensification increased despite slight differences in the responses of sampled groups. Globally, in moderately deforested landscapes species richness was relatively stable, and there was a clear threshold in biodiversity loss midway along the intensification gradient, mainly linked to a drop in forest cover and quality. Our results suggest anthropogenic landscapes with high-quality forest covering >40 % of the surface area may prevent biodiversity loss in Amazonia.

Most tropical landscapes are mainly composed of dynamic mosaics involving multiple land uses. Different histories of land use management can lead to different successional paths. The aim of this study was to determine if there is a successional floristic gradient related to land use types and how these gradients change across three rural mosaics in Eastern Amazon. We also investigated what are the indicator species across mosaics and land use types and how they change through succession. Five sampling points were established in nine family farms at each mosaic. A detrended correspondence analysis was used to reveal the successional gradient. A multivariate regression tree was used to analyze differences in floristic composition between mosaics and land uses. Floristic similarity between land uses formed successional gradient at the mosaics, in which agricultural land uses represent the early stages of secondary succession and forests represent more advanced stages. Total number of species and total number of shade-tolerant species were correlated with advanced successional stages in all mosaics, but pioneer trees were also correlated with advanced stages in fragmented mosaics. Each mosaic had a distinct successional series due to different management approaches. Where the matrix was mainly composed of forest fragments and the human intervention period was shorter, land use types were more similar to one another as they were grouped into fewer successional stages. Thus, the floristic similarity between land use types appears as an indicator of successional advancement across the mosaics and help determine the regenerative capacity of those areas.