Associate Scientist, Dr. Brendan Rogers has walked in many forests, but primary forests, he says, “just feel different.”
Rogers’ work often takes him to the cool, dark understories of black spruce and pine boreal forests, where he’s learned the subtle markers of a truly old, healthy, stable forest ecosystem.
“Generally cooler, often wetter, the trees are bigger but sparser and more likely to be conifers than shrubs or deciduous broadleaf trees,” says Rogers. “The ground is squishy to walk on, from the build-up of peat-like soils, mosses, and lichens.”
Primary forests are also a critical piece in the climate puzzle. They represent centuries of sequestered carbon, and every year they remain standing these forests continue to pull carbon from the atmosphere and lock it away in their trees and soils. They are also the subject of intense debates in forest management circles because, according to Rogers, despite knowing intuitively when you are standing in a primary forest, quantitatively identifying one is a tricky task.
That fact hasn’t deterred Rogers and his collaborator Dr. Brendan Mackey at Griffith University, from their work to identify and map metrics indicative of primary forests. In a joint project launched in 2018, Rogers and Mackey created an index of one such metric— forest stability.
Measuring forest stability
Forest stability is a measure of a forest’s resistance to disturbances, both manmade and natural. A stable forest has a high level of ecosystem integrity—a holistic term referring to the combination of ecosystem structure, function, species composition, and adaptive capacity. Stability reflects the ability of a forest to maintain all of those elements in the face of disturbance.
To quantify stability, Rogers and Mackey isolated two metrics that correlate heavily with integrity in forests— “greenness” and water stress. Greenness, also known as the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (fPAR), indicates the amount of thriving, photosynthesizing plants. Water stress is an index of anomalies in vegetation moisture, indicating an area is dryer than usual. Both of these metrics can be remotely derived from satellites and, when combined with additional data, form an index of overall stability level.
This index was first tested by a postdoctoral scientist at Woodwell Climate, Dr. Tatiana Shestakova, who pulled data from NASA’s MODIS satellite sensor to map stability in sample regions in the Kayapo Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon and southern Taiga region of Siberia. After testing the model, Rogers, Mackey, and Shestakova expanded it to map stability across the entirety of Ontario, Quebec, boreal Siberia, and the Amazon rainforest.
The studies used a method called a time series analysis, which compares satellite data stretching back to 2002 to determine whether a forest had experienced a large-scale disturbance, reducing vegetation greenness and increasing water stress and thus lowering overall stability. These insights were only possible due to the long, consistent dataset produced by MODIS.
“It can be a little bit dicey to assess stability on shorter time scales,” says Rogers. “Because when you work with remote sensing data, forests can fluctuate year to year and sometimes you can’t completely eliminate things like cloud contamination or other errors from the data, so a longer time series helps smooth the data and lets you see the true patterns.”
Prioritizing protection for primary forests
These maps of stability have a crucial role to play in informing forest management policy.
“We’re trying to analyze and spatially map the ecological condition of forests,” says Mackey. “Because this information is needed to help guide where investments for forest protection and restoration go and how they should be prioritized.”
For a long time, Mackey says, management conversations did not distinguish between types of forests, lumping monoculture tree plantations into the same category as ancient natural forests, despite the vast differences in their carbon storage, biodiversity, ecosystem benefits, and overall resistance against disturbances.
“We weren’t seeing the forest for the wood,” Mackey jokes.
Quantifying a characteristic like stability makes it easier for managers to see the difference between the two, identify the forests best able to provide myriad ecological benefits, and ideally, prioritize those for protection.
Mackey uses the example of woodland caribou in Canada, which are considered a threatened species. These animals require large areas of intact primary forest to support successful populations. Overlaying forest stability on top of caribou habitat maps can help decisionmakers narrow in on the largest, highest-stability tracts of forest as top priority for conservation.
According to Rogers, a future goal would be to eventually link maps of forest stability with carbon estimates in order to create forest protection plans with climate mitigation in mind. Research in primary forests has shown they continue to sequester carbon year over year, even though tree growth has tapered off. With primary forests in many places under intense political and economic pressures, it will become even more important to demonstrate the many co-benefits of protecting the earth’s stable forests.
“There’s no forest anywhere that isn’t threatened,” says Mackey. “Development, infrastructure, roading, damming, logging, clearing for agriculture. It’s happening everywhere.”
Stable forests are resilient forests
Tracking stability of forests also allows us to approach a much harder-to-define characteristic of primary forests—resilience.
Stability and resilience go hand in hand, though they are not the same thing. While resilience speaks to an ecosystem’s adaptive capacity or its ability to recover to its original state after some disturbance, stability is a measure of resistance, which is why it correlates so highly to primary forests that haven’t experienced any recent large-scale disturbance.
“If the stability index is showing recovery, then there’s obviously some resilience happening, but beyond that, primary forests tend to be more resistant to certain disturbances,” says Mackey. “Sometimes resistance is better even than being resilient. You’re not destroyed in the first place.”
Highly stable forests do tend to have better adaptive capacities as well, which is why they are so critical to protect.
“By and large,” says Rogers, “forests are resilient.” The stable ones can handle disruptions, and if you leave them to recover they will do just that, as he and Mackey have seen in the data.
But resilience is not infinite. If you hit too hard too fast—overlapping disturbances on an already unstable forest—you can overwhelm its resilience. Fires, larger and more frequent as a result of climate change, have already begun to override boreal forests’ adaptation. And there are more changes coming as the planet continues heating up.
For now, at least, Rogers says, “resilience is still largely what we see out there.”
From translating data into tools, to improving hazard management: Fund for Climate Solutions awards five new grants
The first round of 2025 Fund for Climate Solutions (FCS) awardees has been announced. The FCS advances innovative, solutions-oriented climate science through a competitive, internal, and cross-disciplinary funding process. Generous donor support has enabled us to raise more than $10 million towards the FCS, funding 74 research grants since 2018. Many of the latest cohort of grantees are translating data into tools for amplified impact. One project is bringing climate-related hazard expertise to at-risk communities, empowering them to co-create hazard management plans with their government officials.
A generic climate AI framework for multi-domain time series prediction
Lead: Dr. Yili Yang
Collaborators: Dr. Elchin Jafarov, Dr. Brendan Rogers, Dogukan Teber, Dr. José Lucas Safanelli, Dr. Andrea Castanho, Dr. Christopher Schwalm, Dominick Dusseau, Dr. Marcia Macedo, Dr. Jonathan Sanderman, Dr. Anna Liljedahl, Dr. Sue Natali, Dr. Michael Coe
Current climate science relies heavily on physics-based numerical models to make a wide range of predictions—from thawing permafrost in the Arctic, to tropical fires in the Brazilian Amazon, to soil carbon budgets of pastures, and risks associated with flooding. These types of models require an intense amount of computing power, and are expensive to run enough times to test a variety of detailed scenarios and assumptions. Researchers often need to simplify the models or the questions they are asking, limiting the insights that they can extract. To address this problem, the project team will use deep learning to develop a Center-wide AI framework for climate data that encompasses data from across regions and projects, reducing computational costs and energy demands. This new framework will have the potential to transform the ability of all Woodwell Climate researchers to provide policymakers with rapid, accurate predictions that support urgent climate response strategies.
Climate and Indigenous-centered boreal wildfire risk assessment
Lead: Dr. Kayla Mathes
Collaborators: Dr. Brendan Rogers and Dr. Peter Frumhoff
While fire has always been an important part of boreal ecosystems, fires that reach beyond historical patterns on the landscape are posing widespread consequences for climate, Indigenous sovereignty, and public health. Through our partnerships with land managers and community leaders in Alaska, Woodwell Climate researchers have identified two key barriers to responsive management and policy action: 1) Fire managers currently lack maps that identify areas with both a high probability of wildfire, and a high carbon emission potential from burning and permafrost thaw. 2) Current fire management priorities do not adequately include Indigenous knowledge and community needs. This project will generate two maps to address boreal fire management knowledge gaps. The team will create one map representing wildfire carbon vulnerability, and will also work with Yukon Flats Indigenous communities to co-produce a regionally-specific map that identifies their wildfire management needs and priorities.
Forms and functions of soil organic carbon
Lead: Dr. Jonathan Sanderman
Collaborators: Dr. José Lucas Safanelli, Dr. Ludmila Rattis, Dr. Christopher Neill
Not all carbon is created equal—some forms of carbon are easier for microbes to break down, while others are more persistent. In soils, scientists are typically interested in a few specific forms of organic carbon, but each type has a different decay rate. Measuring the amount of each type of carbon—referred to as fractions—in a soil sample is currently labor intensive, sometimes requiring highly specialized equipment. Woodwell Climate researchers recently proved that a 60-second, low-cost spectroscopy scan can provide similar information on soil carbon fractions to days of work with traditional methods. However, this scan relies on machine learning or deep learning algorithms and high-quality, geographically appropriate training datasets. This project will build an open-source database of soil carbon fraction data, along with freely-available models to predict soil carbon fractions using spectroscopy, hosted by the Woodwell-led Open Soil Spectral Library and Estimation Service. This groundbreaking solution offers a transformative approach to soil carbon monitoring—making soil carbon fraction prediction more widely accessible to labs around the world.
Empowering the Tropical Forests Forever Facility with a tool for informed decision-making
Lead: Dr. Glenn Bush
Collaborators: Kathleen Savage, Patrick Fedor, Emily Sturdivant, Dr. Wayne Walker, Dr. Ludmila Rattis, Dr. Michael Coe
The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), is an initiative spearheaded by the Government of Brazil to establish a US$125 billion global investment fund. If successfully established, TFFF can generate long-term finance to provide ongoing annual compensation to tropical forest nations to conserve intact tropical forests. The fund now needs to build confidence amongst potential sponsors to demonstrate feasible pathways to impact. The project team will create a new location-based dataset of cost-effective forest conservation options for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Brazil, where Woodwell researchers have a long history of relationships and expertise. This dataset will provide valuable information around what forest conservation strategies will be effective, and where, based on financial and social benefits to people in the target landscapes. Ultimately, the team will be able to concretely identify how much forest conservation can be achieved with a given budget, and where to target efforts to resolve the highest-priority risks. With this information, the TFFF can demonstrate the effectiveness of the program and incentivize participation of sponsor countries and tropical forest nations.
Landslide hazard management workshops in Homer and Seward, Alaska
Lead: Dr. Anna Liljedahl
Collaborator: Dr. Jennifer Francis
Extreme rain events, glacier retreat, and permafrost thaw are making landslides and landslide-generated tsunamis in Alaska more likely. However, these hazards are not well-integrated into land and emergency management—for example, warning systems are relatively non-existent. The project team will host workshops in two Alaska communities at risk for landslides and landslide-generated tsunamis to raise awareness about the threats among residents and public agencies, and to identify landslide hazard management practices. The workshops will bring together experts in science and hazard mitigation; city, borough, and state officials; and community members to jointly develop recommendations for action. This effort builds on the ongoing work of Dr. Liljedahl’s project, Arctic Tsunamigenic Slope Instabilities Partnership (Arctic T-SLIP), and will support a future group of research proposals to the National Science Foundation on landslides and landslide-generated tsunami hazards. Insights gained from these workshops will also add detail to a Woodwell Climate Just Access risk report completed for Homer in 2021.
Despite thorough preparations, flying the drone is still nervewracking.
Dr. Manoela Machado, a Research Scientist at Woodwell Climate, has double- and triple- checked her calculated flight path over a study plot in the Cerrado, Brazil’s natural savanna. The drone can essentially fly itself, and she’ll be monitoring its speed, altitude, and battery life from her handheld controller on the ground, but many things could still go wrong. High winds, an unforeseen obstruction, loss of connectivity— all could jeopardize the mission, potentially dropping the expensive equipment 40 meters into the woodland canopy below.
Aboard Machado’s drone sits a powerful piece of technology – a LiDAR sensor. Developed originally for use in meteorology, this remote sensing technique now has widespread applications across scientific fields, from archaeology, to urban planning, to climate science. At Woodwell Climate, Machado and others employ LiDAR to create detailed three dimensional models of landscapes, which provide valuable insight into the structure of ecosystems and the amount of carbon stored in them— all with just a few (million) pulses of light.
What is LiDAR?
LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. Put simply, it is a sensor that uses laser light to measure distance.
Similar to other technologies like sonar and radar, which use sound and radio waves, respectively, LiDAR is an example of an “active” sensor. “Passive” sensors like cameras collect ambient light, while LiDAR actively pings the environment with beams of laser light and records the time those beams take to bounce back. The longer the return time, the further away an object is. That distance measurement is then used to calculate the precise location in three-dimensional space for each reflection.
This process is repeated millions of times during a single scan, resulting in a dense cloud of point locations. With some advanced computing, the data can be assembled into a 3D picture of the landscape.
“It’s effectively three dimensional pointillism,” says Woodwell Climate Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Wayne Walker, who has been using LiDAR in his studies for 25 years.
Far more detailed than an oil painting however, a LiDAR model can reconstruct nearly every leaf, twig, and anthill on a landscape.
“Once you construct that cloud of millions of points, you get to walk inside the forest again,” says Machado. “When you finish processing the data and see the cloud you go, ‘I remember that tree! I remember standing there!’ It’s mesmerizing.”
For a project like Machado’s, scanning a few dozen hectares, the sensor is usually placed on a drone. Larger study areas require sensors mounted on low-flying airplanes or even satellites, but for small ground-based applications there are sensors one can carry, mount on a tripod, or attach to a backpack. Some newer phone models even have LIDAR apps built in. Regardless of how LIDAR is deployed, it remains a straightforward method of data collection. Just point the sensor at what you want to scan and within minutes, you’ve captured the data for a detailed three-dimensional model of your area of interest.
Estimating the weight of a forest
What Machado and Walker are often after from a LiDAR scan is a measurement of biomass, or the total weight of the organic matter present in an ecosystem. Plants store carbon in the form of organic matter, so biomass measurements are an easy way to estimate an area’s carbon storage.
However, measuring a forest’s biomass directly would require cutting down all the trees, drying them out, and weighing what’s left — impractical and needlessly destructive— so scientists use proxy measurements. Walker likens the process to trying to estimate the weight of a human without access to a scale.
“What are the measurements you might use if you couldn’t actually physically measure weight? You might record height, waist size, inseam, and if you obtain enough of these measurements you can start to build a model that relates them to weight,” says Walker. “That’s what we’re trying to do when we estimate the biomass of an entire forest.”
Raw LiDAR data is only a measurement of distance, but by classifying each point based on its location relative to the cloud, researchers are able to extract the proxy measurements needed to model biomass across the ecosystem. Before LiDAR, these proxy measurements— things like trunk diameter, height, and tree species— had to be recorded entirely by hand, which limits data collection based on human time and resources. The time-saving addition of LiDAR has vastly expanded the possible scale of study plots. While field measurements are still essential to calibrate models, LiDAR is one of the only technologies that can give scientists enough detail and scope to assess carbon stocks over entire ecosystems.
“There is no other kind of sensor that even comes close to LiDAR,” says Walker.
The power and potential of LiDAR
At Woodwell Climate, researchers have employed the power of LiDAR to map biomass and carbon from Brazilian forests, to the Arctic tundra. Outside of the Center, the technology has found applications in archaeological surveys, lane detection for self-driving cars, and topographical mapping down to a resolution of half a meter.
But the detail that makes LiDAR so powerful can also make the data a challenge to work with. A single scan produces millions of data points. According to Geospatial Analyst and Research Associate, Emily Sturdivant, who analyzed LiDAR data for Woodwell’s Climate Smart Martha’s Vineyard project, that wealth of data often overwhelms our ability to extract the full potential of information available in one point cloud.
“LiDAR creates so much data that when you look at it, it’s hard not to be blown away imagining all the different things you could do with it. But then reality kicks in,” says Sturdivant. “It’s challenging to take full advantage of all those points with our current processing power. It’s a matter of the analysis technology catching up with the data.”
Processing LiDAR data requires large amounts of computing time and storage space, especially when performing more complex analyses like segmenting the data on the scale of individual trees. As machine learning and cloud computing technologies advance however, this becomes less of an obstacle, and the potential insights from LiDAR datasets will advance along with them.
LiDAR can be an expensive endeavor, too. Drones with the right equipment can cost tens of thousands of dollars, as can hiring a plane and pilot and paying for jet fuel, so data sharing has been important in making the method more cost effective. U.S. government agencies like NASA and the USGS have facilitated the collection of LiDAR data through satellites and plane flights, making the data available for public use. Woodwell Climate research has benefitted from these public datasets, using them to inform landscape studies and carbon flux models.
According to Sturdivant, the reliable production of public data has been greatly beneficial to advancing LiDAR-based studies, though it now faces risks from federal cuts to science agency funding.
“One of the greatest advantages of having publicly supported data is the consistency, but that’s exactly what’s now at risk,” says Sturdivant. “Public accessibility has been so important in allowing new scientists to learn and experiment and then help everyone else learn.”
Each new LiDAR scan represents a trove of information that could be used to better understand our changing planet, making it critical to continue supporting and collecting LiDAR data. Its intensely visual and highly detailed nature has made it one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding something as complex as a forest.
“And on top of that,” says Machado “It’s just visually beautiful.”
On Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at 10:00 a.m EDT, representatives from Woodwell Climate Research Center and IPAM Amazônia joined Governor of Pará, Brazil Helder Barbalho, for a special Climate Week event to explore the impacts of climate change on the state of Pará, and launch a new partnership to develop an in-depth climate risk assessment for the state that can inform local adaptation plans and solutions.
“Three years ago, Woodwell Climate partnered with the UK COP 26 Presidency on research that showed the lack of access to tailored, actionable climate risk information was a critical barrier to climate mitigation and resilience planning at the national and sub-national level,” said Dr. Wayne Walker, Chief Scientific Officer for Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Now, we are proud to be partnering with next year’s COP 30 host on work that provides a clear example of how to bridge this important information gap for the state of Pará.”
In 2021, Woodwell Climate and IPAM conducted an initial climate risk assessment for Belém, the capital of Pará and host of next year’s UN climate negotiations, COP30. The study found that the hottest months in the region are getting hotter, and a growing number of days per year are hitting dangerously high wet-bulb – or “feels like” – temperatures, increasing risk of severe heat stress, especially in a city where most economic activities take place outdoors. It also found that the fire season in Pará is getting longer, exposing local communities to extended periods of worsening air quality. A new, more comprehensive climate risk assessment, the initial results of which were presented during Wednesday’s event, shows that Belém is, and will continue to be, at high risk of severe flooding.
“If climate change continues on its current path, Pará will face crises on multiple fronts—with forests devastated by drought and fire, and cities facing devastating extreme heat and flooding,” said Dr. Ludmila Rattis, Assistant Scientist in Woodwell Climate’s Tropics Program. “The roots of these challenges are global and understanding that can drive urgent action to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and begin necessary adaptation efforts.”
Through this new agreement, Woodwell Climate, IPAM Amazônia, and the Pará government will build on the findings of these assessments to analyze the climate risks facing the Pará region and co-develop effective climate solutions to address them, including identifying areas where green infrastructure could be implemented, pathways to transition to new, more sustainable economies in Pará and across the Amazon, and other mitigation and adaptation strategies.
“The quality of science to support decision-making is fundamental,” said Governor Helder Barbalho. “As the capitol [of Pará] and as the host city of COP30 next year, Belém at this moment has the opportunity for major infrastructure works that will not be the whole solution, but certainly can improve water management, sanitation management, macro-drainage infrastructure to maintain the character of a city surrounded by rivers.”
As a part of this effort, Woodwell Climate will also work with IPAM and the Pará government to develop a case study, as a part of Woodwell’s Unlocking Land-based Opportunities for Climate Solutions (UnLOCS) initiative, to investigate how to effectively scale nature-based climate solutions in Pará leveraging mechanisms like the voluntary carbon market, with the goal of dramatically reducing emissions from land use while delivering meaningful benefits to local communities, ecosystems, and economies.
“We cannot imagine that looking at the forest requires [only] public policies for the forest,” said Governor Barbalho. “We need to be able to look at the forest, but know that the impact of them will require us to act in urban centers.”
“I want to reaffirm IPAM’s commitment to this partnership that we have had with the government of Pará, the State of Pará, and the people of Pará,” said André Guimarães, Executive Director of IPAM Amazônia (Amazon Environmental Research Institute). “We have to work collectively. There is no single solution to the problems we are facing today.”
“This is an incredible opportunity to focus the world’s attention on tropical forests, on Brazil, on Pará,” said Dr. R. Max Holmes, President and CEO of Woodwell Climate Research Center. “We all understand that the Amazon is an incredibly important region, not just for Brazil and for the people that live there, but for the entire world—for all of us.”
In the Amazon Rainforest, there is no such thing as a natural fire. Yet every year we see headlines of rainforest vegetation aflame, smoke drifting across populated areas, and stored carbon spilling into the atmosphere. So how does a rainforest—one of the wettest ecosystems on Earth—catch fire?
Climate impacts on Amazon fire
Whether directly or indirectly, human activities are the root cause of fire in the Amazon.
In order for a fire to start anywhere, you need three things— favorable climatic conditions, a fuel source, and an ignition source. In the Amazon, each side of this “triangle of fire” has been exacerbated by warming temperatures and deforestation, creating flammable conditions that can allow fires to spread out of control deep into the forest once they are ignited.
Climate conditions
High temperature and dryness combine to create the right conditions for fires to spread through the Amazon. As global temperatures have risen, the Amazon region has become hotter and drier, more vulnerable to prolonged droughts and extreme climatic events. Most recently, a climate-driven drought spanning 2023 and 2024 has deeply impacted water levels in the forest— to the point of isolating riverside communities.
Wildfire danger days, or days considered hot and dry enough to increase the likelihood of fire, have become a much more common occurrence deeper in the Amazon, where previously it was just too wet to burn.
Fuel
Felled trees and dry vegetation form the fuel for more fires in the Amazon. How do the trees fall? Some are killed in extreme drought and previous fire, but many are intentionally cut, pushed over by bulldozers for conversion of forest to pasture land. Large-scale deforestation has been advancing into the Amazon for decades, fragmenting thick blocks of forest and replacing them with ranch or farm land. Scientists and activists have been pushing for an urgent stop in deforestation to achieve, among other benefits, a drop in fire numbers. However, despite slowly declining deforestation rates, fires are still increasing, pointing to another important piece of the puzzle – degradation.
When a forest is fragmented by deforestation, it degrades the vegetation that remains standing. Forests along the edges of clearings dry out and weaken, making them more susceptible to future burning. And burning weakens nearby forests yet again, creating more available fuel, setting off a chain of degradation.
Ignition
Ignition in the Amazon is almost entirely human caused— whether accidentally or intentionally. Ranch and farm operations both legally and illegally clearing Amazon rainforest use fire to burn away cut vegetation or prepare existing pasture land for other uses. With climate change creating hotter and drier conditions, and lengthening the dangerous dry season, any ignition becomes potentially risky, whether or not its use is legalized. Especially where forest edges have already been weakened.
However, a study led by Woodwell Climate Postdoctoral Researcher and fire ecologist Dr. Manoela Machado, found that long-term solutions to the Amazon’s fire crisis will require distinguishing between the complex uses of fire. One-size-fits-all fire bans, usually employed as emergency measures and not always strictly enforced, may reduce fire in the short term, but don’t adequately address the underlying reasons people have decided to burn the land.
Ending deforestation and supporting firefighters
Fire in the Amazon follows deforestation and degradation, namely from logging, fires, droughts and fragmentation. Climate change and human encroachment have worked in concert to foster a devastating annual burning regime in the Amazon rainforest that threatens one of the Earth’s most valuable mechanisms for keeping the planet cool.
Eliminating fire from the Amazon will require the elimination of deforestation and degradation sources, as well as the enforcement of strategic fire bans and support of firefighting brigades. Machado, has led several successful workshops with Indigenous fire brigades in Brazil, bringing together groups from across the country to learn about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology they can use to monitor and manage their own forests.
According to Machado, a big part of fire prevention happens in the off-season. Support for activities like community outreach, building fire breaks in collaboration with farmers, and technical assistance to replace legal use of fire, can all help reduce the prevalence of catastrophic fires when the dry-season comes around.
The Amazon is a massive place, and firefighting can be a dangerous job. Especially on the frontiers of deforestation, where land grabbing and illegal deforestation are common and fire fighters are often threatened to stay out of an area. Ultimately, government support, bolstered enforcement of deforestation laws, and viable alternative livelihoods have a major role to play in bringing down fires, alongside continued global efforts to curb climate change.
A new study, just published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment, finds that severe droughts in the Amazon basin over the last two decades have led to longer periods of low water levels and triggered profound impacts on the local population.
The severe droughts in 2005, 2010, and 2015-2016, in particular, not only drastically reduced water levels in a substantial part of the world’s largest river system, but also resulted in low water level periods exceeding 100 days, a month longer than expected.
These droughts have major impacts on rural, remote Amazonian communities who heavily rely on inland water transport to access goods and services, reach urban centers, and maintain their livelihoods. The study concludes that during severe droughts, when such water transport is not available, nearly 50% of non-Indigenous localities and 54% of Indigenous villages in the Brazilian part of the Amazon basin are prone to isolation. These droughts also expose Amazonian communities to scarcity of goods, restricted access to healthcare and education, limited access to fishing and hunting sites, and other major impacts.
“This is the new reality of the Amazon,” said Dr. Letícia Santos de Lima, researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and lead author of the study. “Scientists have been warning for years that the Amazon basin is facing a substantial increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme events due to climate change, on top of severe changes in its hydrological system due to deforestation and forest degradation. These past droughts as well as the most recent one, 2023-2024, are showing that the impacts on the ecosystems extend severely to the Amazon population.”
“The Amazon faces increasingly severe droughts due to global warming, with very real consequences for the communities that live there,” added Dr. Marcia Macedo, Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist and study co-author. “To better prepare for these extreme climate events, we need climate solutions that prioritize water resources alongside efforts to curb carbon emissions. This will be key for sustaining resilient ecosystems and communities in the Amazon and around the world.”
The paper states that “actions to cope with recent droughts in the Amazon have been reactive rather than proactive and grounded in preparedness and adaptation principles,” and calls for Amazon countries to “develop long-term strategies for mitigation, adaptation, and disaster response.” The authors also stress that any solutions to isolation must not also worsen the problem. For example, roads would not be an effective solution as they are a well-known driver of deforestation, which leads to changes in rainfall, contributes to a higher volume of sediments in rivers, and would impair navigability even further.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, researchers combined spatial analysis, methods from hydrology, and news media content analysis to deliver the first spatiotemporal assessment of cross-sectoral impacts of droughts in the Amazon basin.
Climate change was the center of the debate between rural producers, scientists, public authorities and indigenous peoples at the Symposium to Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Tanguro Research Station, which took place in Brasilia from June 10 to 12. The event highlighted the dialogue between the groups as a key to socio-environmental and economic transformation in favor of a possible future for life on Earth.
Functioning as an open-air laboratory, the Tanguro Research Station is located in the city of Querência, in Mato Grosso, in the southeastern Amazon. It was founded by IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) in partnership with the company Amaggi and the Woodwell Climate Research Center in the United States. In two decades of existence, the results of this joint initiative add up to more than 180 high-impact scientific publications and bring together researchers from seven countries studying the environment and agriculture.
Ângela Conceição, president of FETAGRI, speaks on a panel at the event (Photo: Lucas Guaraldo/IPAM)
‘’The revolution in the countryside cost almost 50% of the Cerrado and 20% of the Amazon, this model is no longer sustainable, “said André Guimarães, executive director of IPAM. “It is necessary to ask questions to companies, as they will also have to adapt services to a new climatic condition,” he added. The director recalled that the assumption of the work at the Tanguro Research Station is to bring agricultural production closer to nature conservation.
The plurality of experiences and knowledge shared at the symposium was highlighted by Max Holmes, CEO of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, an institution that has been working alongside IPAM for thirty years.
“Bringing together this group of experts from science, civil society and from different places gives me hope and optimism. The challenge for all of us is to take forward the big ideas around the climate solutions discussed. Climate conferences are opportunities to continue to make progress on these incredibly urgent issues, which can only be solved in partnership,” Holmes said.
Balance
The meeting of different sectors around the socio-environmental and economic discussion comes at a time when studies show the loss of natural functions of tropical forests due to the global burning of fossil fuels, and, in Brazil, mainly due to deforestation, degradation and fire.
Ecosystem services, as the benefits produced by nature are called, maintain all forms of life, ensuring air quality and the availability of water and food, for example. They contribute to pollination, pest control and local climate regulation, providing adequate rain, humidity and temperature for agricultural production.
“How do we build a land use solution so that people understand that it is possible to reconcile forest with conservation, development with job and income generation from a better use of what we have already cut down? This is Brazil’s challenge. That is why we have sought a partnership with IPAM. That is why we created, in the State of Pará, the State Policy on Climate Change and the Amazon Now program,” said Helder Barbalho, governor of the State of Pará, present at the event.
Pará Governor HelderBarbalho and Minister Paulo Teixeira participated in the symposium (Photo: Disclosure/Agência Pará)
“We don’t know what the world will be like going forward, we just know it can’t be the same. We have a lot to learn and build with each other. Climate change is real and the producer realizes it, but if he does not feel he belongs in the conversation about what needs to be improved, it is difficult to engage,” said Juliana Lopes, director of ESG, Communication and Compliance at AMAGGI.
From 2022 to 2023, agriculture grew by 15.1%, influencing GDP performance, but still putting pressure on Brazilian biomes. The Tanguro Research Station develops studies to understand the influence of the forest on agriculture and vice versa, in order to subsidize environmentally and socially sustainable production and conservation strategies.
“Results of Tanguro’s research socialized with us are important to see new perspectives and develop agriculture, ensuring food security,” added ÂngelaConceição, president of FETAGRI (Federation of Agricultural Workers of the State of Pará).
Juliana Lopes endorsed the recognition: “The partnership with IPAM was the way that AMAGGI found, with researchers, to make an assessment of how we can ensure continuity in agricultural production, investing in the conservation of biodiversity and native areas.”
Knowledge generation
Storing half the carbon emitted on the globe, tropical forests provide climate stability. This stockpile capacity is being hampered by climate change caused by human activities. “Our challenge is to find ways to maintain that service and, at the same time, growth and prosperity,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center researcher Michael Coe.
And how to find an answer to this challenge? The solution may lie in nature itself. Data presented by Wayne Walker, senior scientist at Woodwell, shows that nature-based solutions have the potential to deliver 37% of the emissions reduction needed to limit global average temperature rise to less than 2°C. “Land is more than just a carbon store. We need to implement these solutions in a scalable way, ensuring capital flows with equity and sustainability,” he commented.
IPAM researcher Filipe Arruda pointed out that environmental disturbances have been occurring more intensely with climate change. “The impact on the habitat modifies the animal and plant species on site, changing everything from temperature control to pest control within the forest and in agricultural areas.”
Leonardo Maracahipes, coordinator of the Tanguro Research Station and researcher at IPAM, presented a study on the change in tree leaves in areas of intact forest and in those fragmented by agricultural activity. “The thickness of the leaf was greater in the area of agriculture, while the size of the leaf was greater in the areas of preserved forest,” he explained, demonstrating vegetation strategies to adapt to the surroundings.
In farming, the effects of nature are also the object of study: “We estimate a 6% reduction in soybean yield for every 1°C increase in temperature,” said Ludmila Rattis, a researcher at IPAM and the Woodwell Climate Research Center. On the positive side, when the forest is maintained, it helps in production. Bianca Rebelatto, a researcher at IPAM, recalled that 90% of Brazil’s agriculture is not irrigated and that forests protect crops against heat waves and reduce future climate challenges.
Scientists working at the Tanguro Research Station (Photo: Mitch Korolev/Woodwell)
Responses presented by the sectors to avoid more extreme events, reducing damage to the environment and promoting responsible ways of living include, in addition to sustainable production, the bioeconomy of natural products from the Amazon and Cerrado.
“Land use change and climate change have already increased the chances of a catastrophic fire in the Xingu by another 10%,” explained Paulo Brando, IPAM associate researcher and professor at Yale University in the United States. “About 16% of forests in the southeastern Amazon may burn due to these factors. Fire-degraded forests seem healthy from the point of view of remote sensing, but they are much more vulnerable to extreme events such as drought, which is what is happening in the Xingu and much of the region.”
According to Brando, the Xingu region is 2°C warmer due to increased deforestation and human pressure on the natural landscape. The Xingu Indigenous Territory functions as a local air conditioner, with 5°C less than monocultures and neighboring pastures, revealed a technical note produced by IPAM and the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
While the situation is not resolved, the peoples of the Xingu continue to struggle to produce. “We have the land, but we keep buying in the city. We, from the Xingu, are still studying how we can make production on a larger scale, “said Yuri Kuikuro, a master’s student in Ecology at INPA (National Institute for Amazonian Research). “It is necessary to bring young people to train, to use technology, to try to understand how to produce to maintain our culture. Add science to figure it out,” he concluded.
Survival
“First we have to think about surviving climate change: working in the collective, regardless of whether it is civil society, company or public power, for our physical and mental survival,” said Mauro O’ de Almeida, Secretary of State for Environment and Sustainability of Pará, present at the symposium.
The climate emergency alerts to the Amazon’s point of no return, also known as the tipping point, from which the biome would lose its natural capabilities and become a type of degraded ecosystem — a “zombie Amazon”. In the Cerrado, the reality also worries scientists, given that most of the biome’s remaining native vegetation is within private rural properties.
“It is common to hear that the world will end, but it has already ended, due to climate change, for the people who died in Rio Grande do Sul,” said researcher Ludmila Rattis, referring to the extreme climatic event of rainfall in Rio Grande do Sul this year. About 175 people died and 38 are missing. More than 2 million were affected by the floods, according to the Civil Defense.
In the Amazon, the Rio Negro drought in 2023 affected all 62 cities in the State of Amazonas and affected more than 600,000 people, also according to the state Civil Defense.
“The Xingu Indigenous Territory is also being impacted by climate change. Indigenous people have been talking about this for a long time and we are not taken seriously. These extreme events are affecting all sectors, so sitting at the table with partners who were once our enemies shows how we need to be united to change the scenario we have, “said Kaianaku Kamaiurá, partnership coordinator at OURS and coordinator of the Amazônia de Pé project.
The climate commitments of Brazil and the world, to be renewed and expanded until COP30 (United Nations Conference on Climate Change) in Belém, are the necessary measure to prevent the worsening of housing conditions on the planet and prevent more lives from being lost.
“First, that the world can accelerate the change in the energy matrix to stop emitting carbon dioxide. Second, pay for the maintenance of the forest and its recovery. In the past, I remember that agribusiness was against the climate debate, but not today: it has assumed an awareness that it needs the forest. COP30 will be the great political space in the Amazon to demand from the world attention for those who are preserving,” said Paulo Teixeira, Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture.
The Tanguro Research Station 20-Year Celebration Symposium was held by IPAM in partnership with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Yale University School of the Environment, and Max-Planck-Geselschaft. Learn more about the Tanguro Research Station and how to donate on the website.
O céu se abre no momento em que nosso caminhão deixa o último trecho de estrada pavimentada. A Diretora do Programa de Água, Dra. Marcia Macedo, aperta os olhos para manter o foco no que consegue ver entre uma limpeza e outra do para-brisa. Em poucos minutos, nosso caminho se transformou de uma estrada de terra em um leito de rio de lama laranja brilhante, sulcado pela passagem de caminhões pesados que transportam soja das fazendas vizinhas.
Macedo desvia para evitar solavancos e depressões, mas logo há mais deles do que estrada plana. Nós nos preparamos para as poças, olhando pelas janelas salpicadas de spray laranja.
É uma manhã de segunda-feira, na estação chuvosa, nos arredores da Amazônia, e estamos indo para o trabalho.
A Estação de Campo de Tanguro fica a cerca de uma hora de carro de Canarana, a cidade mais próxima, localizada em uma região do Brasil às vezes chamada de arco do desmatamento. Há várias décadas, a agricultura começou a surgir na região sul da floresta amazônica, criando áreas retangulares de terras agrícolas na floresta primária. Na maior parte do trajeto, somos ladeados apenas por megacampos de soja ou pastos de gado.
Macedo, que realiza pesquisas na Tanguro desde 2007, lembra-se de uma época em que a viagem poderia ter sido marcada pela travessia do limiar das savanas florestais do Cerrado – Brasil – para a Amazônia. Agora, o desmatamento próximo à estrada obscureceu essa transição natural. Eventualmente, no entanto, tufos verdes exuberantes emergem da chuva e percebemos que estamos quase lá.
Desde a sua fundação em 2004, a Tanguro tem oferecido a pesquisadores de todo o mundo a oportunidade de investigar grandes questões sobre como as mudanças climáticas e o desmatamento estão afetando a Amazônia. Macedo e sua equipe vieram para estudar os córregos e reservatórios da Tanguro.
Paramos do lado de fora da estação de pesquisa, tirando as malas, embrulhadas em sacos plásticos de lixo, da caçamba da caminhonete. A assistente de pesquisa, Zoe Dietrich, segura vários componentes eletrônicos vitais no peito, levando-os para uma varanda coberta para protegê-los da chuva. A pós-doutoranda Dra. Aibra Atwood começa a retirar tubos de núcleo de sedimentos de uma pilha de equipamentos. As nuvens se dissipam e o dia de trabalho na Tanguro começa.
A Fundação
A decisão de se estabelecer na fazenda Tanguro causou polêmica na época.“Quase nos separou”, lembra o fundador da Tanguro, Dr. Daniel Nepstad. “Tivemos uma discussão que durou dois dias.”
Quatorze anos antes, Nepstad havia estabelecido o programa amazônico no Woodwell Climate (então Woods Hole Research Center) no estado do Pará, estudando a resiliência das florestas amazônicas durante as longas estações secas. Esse trabalho deu origem a um novo instituto de pesquisa com sede no Brasil – em 1995, Nepstad cofundou o Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM) em Belém para buscar ciência relevante para políticas que pudessem informar o desenvolvimento sustentável na Amazônia. A Woodwell Climate e o IPAM começaram a realizar experimentos de simulação de secas e descobriram que a floresta tropical, que há muito tempo era considerada imune ao fogo, perdia essa resistência durante secas severas. Para investigar as implicações disso, Nepstad percebeu que eles precisavam de um novo experimento em algum lugar na borda da Amazônia, onde é mais seco o ano todo.
Nepstad vinha passando cada vez mais tempo no estado do Mato Grosso, interessado pela expansão do cultivo de soja na Amazônia. Durante sua busca por um novo local de estudo, o Grupo Amaggi fez um convite extraordinário.
O Grupo Amaggi era, na época, o maior produtor de soja do mundo, e a soja estava rapidamente se tornando o inimigo ambiental número um, à medida que centenas de milhares de acres de florestas eram derrubados para expandir seu cultivo.
“Mas o Grupo Amaggi, uma empresa brasileira, queria se antecipar à questão”, diz Nepstad. A perspectiva de perder um mercado importante na Europa levantou questões sobre o melhor caminho a seguir. Em 2002, eles criaram o primeiro sistema para rastrear as práticas florestais dos agricultores que lhes vendiam soja. Em 2004, eles fizeram um convite a Nepstad para pesquisar as florestas em sua recém-adquirida propriedade Tanguro, um conjunto de fazendas de gado desmatadas que estavam em processo de conversão para campos de soja.
A esperança era que a pesquisa demonstrasse ao mundo o que realmente estava acontecendo nessas enormes fazendas de soja na Amazônia, fornecendo dados que poderiam contribuir para conversas sobre soja sustentável.
“Há vinte anos, havia muitas discussões sobre preservação ambiental e agricultura”, diz a Diretora de ESG, Comunicações e Conformidade do Grupo Amaggi, Juliana de Lavor Lopes. “Esses dois podem criar uma simbiose? Acho que sabíamos que [eles] poderiam trabalhar juntos, mas será que poderíamos provar isso?”
Para Nepstad, o convite também foi a oportunidade perfeita para realizar um experimento de fogo controlado em um local ideal. Após muitos debates, o IPAM decidiu aceitar.
“Muitas pessoas temiam que isso arruinasse nossa reputação, minasse nossa credibilidade junto às organizações de base – muitas ONGs achavam que estávamos nos vendendo”, diz Nepstad. “Algumas pessoas nos acusaram de termos sido comprados pelo Grupo Amaggi.”
Mas Nepstad foi muito claro quanto aos termos da parceria. Eles não aceitariam nenhum dinheiro da empresa além do que o Grupo Amaggi investiu nos prédios do campus da estação de pesquisa. E eles só apoiariam as atividades da fazenda na medida em que a ciência permitisse. A pesquisa relataria com precisão os impactos da agricultura sobre a floresta, sem restrições de publicação
Assim, em 2004, com poucos recursos financeiros, mas acompanhados por uma equipe dedicada de técnicos de campo e pesquisadores dos experimentos de seca no Pará, – alguns dos quais ainda trabalham na estação de campo atualmente – Woodwell e IPAM montaram um acampamento na Tanguro.
A vida na estação
As botas sujas de lama começam a fazer fila do lado de fora da porta do refeitório às 11h50. Donna Lucia serve o almoço pontualmente ao meio-dia.
Maria Lúcia Pinheiro Nascimento administra a cozinha da Tanguro há mais de 16 anos, preparando refeições fartas para cientistas e técnicos de campo famintos três vezes ao dia. O almoço e o jantar geralmente envolvem alguma carne grelhada ou cozida lentamente, arroz, feijão e uma salada fresca ou legumes assados. Hoje tem abóbora, abobrinha e sobras de linguiça e peito do churrasco de ontem à noite. O café da manhã é mais leve – pão de queijo, ovos, pão fresco, frutas e café – preparado e devorado antes do início do trabalho às 7h.
Muitos dos técnicos que vivem e trabalham aqui cinco dias por semana dizem que a Tanguro é como uma segunda casa, e seus colegas, uma segunda família. Para Dona Lúcia, como é chamada pelos funcionários e visitantes, cozinhar para a estação de pesquisa não é como cozinhar para a família. É realmente cozinhar para a família. Seu marido, Sebastião Nascimento, o “Seu Bate”, foi um dos primeiros técnicos de campo a trabalhar no experimento de seca no Pará. Ele voou para se juntar à equipe da Tanguro um ano após a fundação da empresa e trouxe sua família um ano depois, incluindo seu filho, Ebis Pinheiro de Nascimento, que também entrou como técnico de campo. Um terceiro técnico do Pará, Raimundo Mota Quintino, conhecido como “Santarém”, juntou-se à família quando se casou com a filha de Dona Lúcia.
“Estou com minha família”, diz ela. “Isso me traz alegria.”
Com ou sem parentesco, a equipe da Tanguro trabalha em conjunto, como uma família. A cooperação e o respeito são essenciais em um lugar tão remoto e desconectado (o wifi só se estende a cerca de 18 metros do prédio da cantina) como a Tanguro.
“Brincamos que é como se fosse o ‘Big Brother’”, diz o gerente de campo Darlisson Nunes da Costa. “Mas estamos realmente unidos e nos respeitamos mutuamente. É um ambiente maravilhoso para se trabalhar”.
Também pode ser um ambiente fisicamente desafiador, com longos dias de calor e umidade, preocupações com a segurança em uma floresta cheia de cobras e onças, porcos selvagens territoriais e terrenos que podem facilmente causar uma torção no tornozelo. Ao mesmo tempo, garantindo que os cientistas obtenham os dados de que precisam.
Todo técnico de campo precisa ser adaptável e versátil, pois, além dos horários das refeições, não há rotina diária. Sua manhã pode envolver o corte de videiras para encontrar um caminho para um riacho escondido, selecionado a partir de imagens de satélite como um local de amostragem. A tarde pode ser dedicada à solução de problemas em uma das torres de monitoramento de carbono.
“Não podemos dizer que temos um trabalho monótono”, diz Seu Bate. “Fazemos de tudo um pouco.”
Mesmo assim, cada um dos técnicos desenvolveu suas especialidades ao longo das décadas. Santarém ainda usa as habilidades de aquaviário de seu trabalho anterior como guia de pesca na cidade portuária do Pará que lhe deu o apelido. Ele leva a canoa para os reservatórios com frequência, ajudando os pesquisadores a extraírem núcleos de sedimentos. Seu Bate pode construir o que você precisar – seja a base de alumínio para uma câmara flutuante de monitoramento de metano ou um colar personalizado para segurar tubos de núcleo de solo pesados enquanto você coleta amostras, basta dar a ele 20 minutos e algumas ferramentas elétricas. Nunes da Costa mantém as atividades de campo da equipe organizadas a cada semana e consegue, sem esforço, abrir um caminho claro na floresta. O Ebis gosta de coletar dados, especialmente quando isso envolve a coleta de amostras de água ou de peixes nos cursos d’água de Tanguro. Para o coordenador de projetos científicos da estação, Dr. Leonardo Maracahipes-Santos, escalar a torre de carbono de 35 metros é como caminhar.
As pessoas que visitam a Tanguro variam. Às vezes, as semanas passam com apenas os técnicos de campo na residência e, às vezes, as pequenas casas em estilo de cabine e a alegre cantina da estação estão repletas de hóspedes.
Esta primavera já foi bastante movimentada. Maracahipes-Santos cuida das atividades diárias e organiza a equipe rotativa de visitantes. Em poucas semanas, ele passou de acompanhar
uma equipe de jornalistas brasileiros pelos locais de estudo, a trabalhar com colaboradores do Instituto Max Planck na manutenção de rotina das torres de carbono e a coordenar conversas entre pesquisadores visitantes e representantes do Grupo Amaggi sobre a remoção de várias barragens na propriedade.
E mesmo durante as semanas mais calmas, ainda há muita ciência a ser feita – coleta de amostras para estudos em andamento, execução de análises de dados, verificação de equipamentos. É difícil conseguir um dia de folga na Tanguro, mas pelo menos nunca é entediante.
“É muito interessante, porque fazemos parte de um projeto grandioso, que é montar experimentos em campo junto com os cientistas”, diz Nunes da Costa. “Nós nos sentimos um pouco como cientistas porque todo esse negócio começa no chão. Podemos começar com um pedaço de madeira colocado no chão e chegar até um artigo científico. Tenho muito orgulho. Não apenas de mim, mas de toda a equipe.”
Por sua vez, Dona Lucia se orgulha de alimentar a ciência na Tanguro.
“Tenho muito orgulho de estar em uma empresa como esta, hoje”, diz Dona Lúcia. “Hoje em dia, para trabalhar em uma empresa como essa, é preciso ter um diploma, e eu não tenho. Não tenho diploma de gastronomia. Não tenho nenhum diploma. Mas aprendo todos os dias”.
Um laboratório natural
O trabalho de campo termina às 16h, deixando Macedo, Atwood, Nunez da Costa e eu suados e exaustos após passar uma tarde vagando por áreas úmidas acidentadas em busca de leitos de riachos. A Atwood estava colocando medidores de temperatura a cada 500 metros acima e abaixo dos reservatórios. Ela está interessada nos impactos que esses pequenos corpos d’água têm sobre a bacia hidrográfica e até onde esses impactos se estendem. No entanto, os riachos amazônicos muitas vezes passam por segmentos intransponíveis de pântano, de modo que encontrar os locais de amostragem exige uma caminhada vigorosa e um bom facão.
Após a caminhada, encontramos o grupo de jornalistas visitantes no reservatório de Darro. Um dos maiores reservatórios de Tanguro, o Darro fornece água para a estação de pesquisa para chuveiros e limpeza. Em dias especialmente quentes, também é um ótimo local para nadar.
A água é quente – mais quente do que os riachos próximos, os dados de temperatura de Atwood confirmaram – mas ainda assim mais fria do que o ar abafado. Também é transparente. Nossos pés podem ser vistos pisando na faixa de água mais fria lá embaixo. Reflexos brancos e ondulantes se formam na superfície, um espelho perfeito das nuvens acima.
Na Amazônia, a água é tudo. É isso que torna possível a existência de florestas exuberantes. É o que liga uma fazenda de soja no Mato Grosso a estuários na foz do rio Amazonas. E é isso que conecta essa região ao clima global. As nuvens que se aglomeram acima de Darro ficam mais pesadas e mais escuras com a chuva enquanto nadamos. Embora parte dessa chuva caia de volta à Terra aqui, outra parte é empurrada para fora dos trópicos para cair em outros lugares.
“A água faz duas coisas”, diz o diretor do programa Woodwell Tropics, Dr. Mike Coe. “Primeiro: a chuva está caindo em outro lugar. Segundo: água é energia. É preciso uma enorme quantidade de energia para evaporar a água e essa energia é liberada em outro lugar quando chove. Assim, a energia do sol que cai aqui é transportada para todo o mundo. Isso é muito importante. Isso define o clima”.
Isso significa que, por meio da água, as mudanças aqui têm o potencial de causar grandes mudanças em todo o mundo. A localização da Tanguro em uma região da Amazônia que sofreu intenso desmatamento para a agricultura há apenas algumas décadas torna-a um local ideal para estudar essa causa e efeito.
“Quando você remove as florestas da paisagem, você muda algumas coisas fundamentalmente que não podem ser desfeitas”, diz Macedo. “Você altera a quantidade de água nos córregos, altera a profundidade de enraizamento das plantas na paisagem, altera todo o ciclo hidrológico.”
A Tanguro é bastante representativa das mudanças ocorridas em toda a região. É um mosaico de florestas naturais, campos de soja e algodão e alguns bosques de eucaliptos plantados. Algumas de suas bacias hidrográficas estão completamente dentro dos limites da floresta, outras passam completamente por terras agrícolas. Alguns riachos têm florestas bem preservadas ao longo de suas margens, enquanto outros estão em processo de restauração. As espécies amazônicas se misturam com as da savana brasileira. Está se tornando mais quente e mais seco à medida que o clima muda. Para os cientistas climáticos e ecologistas da Woodwell e do IPAM, esse é o laboratório natural perfeito.
Como o primeiro projeto de pesquisa lançado naquele laboratório, o experimento com fogo ganhou muita atenção.
“O Grupo Amaggi mobilizou a sociedade, havia jornalistas, repórteres de jornais e bombeiros. Pessoas da empresa e pessoas das cidades locais”, lembra Nepstad. Era um território novo, queimando intencionalmente a floresta para saber como isso mudava a paisagem. “Foi muito emocionante.”
A cada novo ano de queima, as percepções se revelavam. Em um ano particularmente quente e seco, a floresta queimou ainda mais do que o previsto. Nepstad se lembra de ter visto as chamas, na altura das canelas, ainda queimando às 2h da manhã seguinte. A mortalidade das árvores depois disso saltou de 6% para 50%.
“Isso foi trágico para aquele trecho de floresta”, diz Macedo. “Mas produziu percepções realmente importantes. Quase presciente. Basta olhar para 2023: foi um ano incrivelmente seco na Amazônia e, de repente, vimos florestas no meio da floresta tropical – áreas que costumavam ser muito úmidas para queimar agora podem queimar durante uma grande seca.”
Com o experimento de fogo em andamento, ainda havia quase 200.000 acres de terra disponíveis para estudo, então Nepstad convidou pesquisadores como Macedo, Coe e o Dr. Paulo Brando, que trabalhou com Nepstad no Pará, para explorar que outras histórias a Tanguro poderia contar sobre a Amazônia. Em seus 20 anos de história, mais de 180 artigos foram publicados a partir de pesquisas na estação, variando em tópicos desde mudanças hidrológicas até os limites climáticos da agricultura produtiva, a degradação do carbono florestal e o valor dos excrementos de anta para restauração. Brando atribui os resultados prolíficos da estação ao conhecimento de sua equipe.
“Parte da magia da Tanguro é aprender com as pessoas que trabalham há 20 anos na floresta. Eles têm um senso intuitivo do que está acontecendo com a saúde dessas florestas”, diz Brando.
Outro aspecto exclusivo da localização da Tanguro é sua posição em relação ao ecossistema maior. As centenas de pequenos riachos que cruzam a Tanguro formam as cabeceiras do rio Xingu, um importante afluente do tronco principal do Amazonas. Tanguro fica a apenas 60 quilômetros da Terra Indígena Xingu, por onde corre o rio de mesmo nome. Quaisquer distúrbios a montante de nutrientes, sedimentos ou fluxo de saída do córrego têm o potencial de se propagar até a reserva, afetando os meios de subsistência das comunidades indígenas.
“Os cursos d’água que estamos explorando na Tanguro fluem para a Reserva do Xingu. Portanto, é importante entender essas questões científicas de como a qualidade da água está sendo afetada pela agricultura como uma questão transfronteiriça”, diz Macedo. “A água conecta tudo.”
Conexão com a comunidade
Quando a Coordenadora Geral da Tanguro, Dra. Ludmila Rattis, iniciou sua pesquisa de pós-doutorado na estação de campo, Canarana era uma cidade diferente – pequena e dominada por homens o suficiente para que uma cientista ambiental não tivesse esperança de permanecer anônima. Rattis via seu nome escrito na comnda do bar como “menina do IPAM”. Ao andar na rua, sentia os olhares e às vezes era abordada por pessoas perguntando se ela trabalhava com os indígenas.
Era um lugar difícil de se estar, lembra ela. “Eu me sentia observada o tempo todo. Eu não podia fazer nada sem trazer comigo o nome de uma instituição. E a conexão com a Internet era de menos de um megabyte, não dava para assistir filmes em streaming”, diz Rattis. “Abrir um e-mail era um desafio.”
Trabalhar para uma organização ambiental sem fins lucrativos em uma cidade agrícola que deve sua própria existência ao desmatamento é, às vezes, difícil de navegar. Mas a agricultura está entrelaçada no DNA da Estação de Campo de Tanguro. Os cientistas do clima podem se arrepiar ao ver escavadeiras pressionando a vegetação rasteira, mas em última análise, a proximidade com a agricultura aqui levou a algumas das percepções mais valiosas da estação.
“Por estarmos neste lugar há muito tempo, podemos observar as mudanças à medida que elas ocorrem e dizer algo com muito mais confiança sobre os impactos mais amplos na Amazônia”, diz Macedo.
A parceria com o Grupo Amaggi também ajudou a conectar a ciência a grandes decisões no setor de soja. Em 2012, quando os debates sobre o futuro do Código Florestal brasileiro estavam em pleno andamento, Nepstad foi convidado a participar de uma viagem de campo a Tanguro com os principais legisladores que estavam elaborando o novo código, incluindo o senador Blairo Maggi, proprietário do Grupo Amaggi. Ver em primeira mão os experimentos de restauração florestal na estação ajudou a demonstrar a viabilidade da implementação das novas proteções. O Código Florestal foi revisado e a maioria de suas restrições ao desmatamento ainda está em vigor.
“Foi realmente a ciência que abriu essas portas”, diz Nepstad.
A pesquisa de Rattis, em particular, contribuiu para fortalecer as parcerias com fazendas da região. Ela passou o ano em Canarana conversando com os agricultores sobre a experiência deles com as mudanças climáticas – estações chuvosas que começam mais tarde, queda na produtividade das colheitas – e perguntando quais informações os modelos climáticos poderiam ser úteis. Aos poucos, à medida que Rattis apresentava a eles seus resultados, mostrando-lhes as previsões de chuva e temperatura e mantendo um diálogo aberto, ela construiu um relacionamento que não só fortaleceu sua relação com a comunidade, mas ajudou a orientar pesquisas futuras.
“Os fazendeiros lhe dirão se algo parece certo ou não, e 90% das vezes eles dirão ‘uau, você pode me enviar esse gráfico? Quero mostrar aos meus vizinhos’”, diz Rattis. Um novo estudo começou depois que conversas com um gerente de fazenda sugeriram uma conexão entre as florestas e a produção agrícola. “Eu disse que estávamos nos perguntando se as plantações produziriam mais perto da floresta, e ele disse: ‘isso faz sentido porque as plantas de algodão são maiores perto da borda da mata’.”
Os pesquisadores da Tanguro também estabeleceram conexões com os moradores da reserva indígena do Xingu, nas proximidades, formando parcerias com as aldeias para estudar os impactos a jusante dos incêndios recorrentes. Um professor da Universidade Federal da Amazônia (UFRA), Dr. Divino Silvério, que realizou sua pesquisa de doutorado no Tanguro, liderou grande parte desse trabalho.
“A ideia principal era integrar o conhecimento científico que tínhamos na Tanguro com o conhecimento tradicional dos povos indígenas, para quantificar melhor os impactos do fogo sobre as espécies que são usadas por eles para alimentação, construção e medicina”, diz Silvério.
Durante o estudo, Silvério e sua equipe de pesquisa visitaram a reserva do Xingu para discutir a pesquisa e compartilhar percepções. Eles também forneceram bolsas de estudo a vários estudantes indígenas para ajudar na coleta de dados e visitar a Tanguro para uma troca de conhecimentos.
“Os povos indígenas vêm manejando bem as florestas há séculos”, diz Silvério. “Mas agora temos a mudança climática. Está se tornando realmente urgente ter esse tipo de conversa no sentido de encontrar algumas soluções para mitigar os impactos das mudanças climáticas sobre os meios de subsistência dessas pessoas.”
Rattis também acredita que a Tanguro tem um papel a desempenhar como um centro educacional. No último ano, ela tem trabalhado para criar um prêmio de redação para estudantes locais, homenageando um funcionário do IPAM que defendeu a educação ambiental nos anos 2000.
“A Tanguro que temos hoje é o legado de muitas pessoas que trabalharam lá”, diz Rattis.
Como será o futuro?
Maracahipes-Santos já escalou essa torre milhares de vezes. Hoje ele sobe mais uma vez para prender uma corda sobressalente em um de seus suportes superiores. Se um de nós desmaiar
no meio da escalada, pelo menos eles poderão nos descer com cuidado. Se tudo der certo, escalaremos os 35 metros para cima e para trás com nossa própria força, ancorados no centro da torre com um mecanismo que trava como um cinto de segurança sob força repentina para baixo.
A torre em si é essencialmente uma escada coberta de vegetação, com vários medidores de gás e de temperatura presos a postes finos no topo. Três deles estão localizados ao redor da Tanguro para monitorar o movimento de dióxido de carbono, vapor de água e outros gases que entram e saem da paisagem. Essa torre em particular fica a 15 minutos de caminhada em uma seção de floresta intacta que foi usada como local de controle durante o experimento de incêndio.
Depois de verificar e verificar novamente minhas cordas, um grito de Maracahipes-Santos, que já estava no topo, sinalizou que era hora de começar a escalada.
Uma mão sobe um degrau, depois a outra. Os pés acompanham. Passo, passo, respire. Você deve se inclinar para trás, deixar que o arnês o segure e empurrar seu peso para cima com as pernas, mas um instinto inabalável me faz puxar com força a escada, de modo que, quando chego ao topo, meus antebraços estão tremendo. Suada, ofegante, corada, mas finalmente sobre o galpão. Maracahipes-Santos sorri e prende meu gancho de segurança em um dos suportes. Aqui em cima, somos mais altos do que as árvores.
Do alto da torre, você pode ler a história e o futuro desse lugar apenas virando a cabeça. A floresta se estende até o horizonte em uma direção, um mosaico ininterrupto de verde profundo. Em outro, é possível ver retângulos enormes de terra vermelha e tapetes uniformes de soja verde-clara cortados na paisagem. Em algum lugar escondido atrás de um bosque de eucaliptos plantados estão os telhados de metal corrugado da estação de pesquisa. A chuva está caindo no horizonte.
Há poucas décadas, tudo isso era floresta. Apenas outro aglomerado impossivelmente espesso de organismos vivos que respiram, morrem e crescem novamente em um dos ecossistemas de maior biodiversidade do planeta. Agora, os instrumentos de sensoriamento remoto documentam seu declínio.
A pesquisa na Tanguro é orientada por uma grande questão: “Qual é o futuro da Amazônia?” Mas a resposta a essa pergunta dependerá: dos cientistas que continuarem a vir a Tanguro para entender como esse ecossistema está mudando; dos técnicos de campo que tornarem possível conduzir a ciência na floresta com segurança; dos fazendeiros que se orgulharem de cuidar das florestas que estão em suas terras; dos funcionários do governo que criarem políticas que reflitam a ciência; e das decisões de pessoas a milhares de quilômetros de distância para reverter a mudança climática.
“Quando se faz uma pesquisa sobre essa floresta, percebe-se que é um sistema incrivelmente resistente, que agora está enfrentando estresses e distúrbios cada vez mais fortes. Portanto, ele precisa de ajuda e precisa ter uma chance, mas continuará”, diz Nepstad. “E acho que a Tanguro tem um papel importante nisso.”
Os últimos 20 anos na Tanguro contribuíram para direcionar a Amazônia para um futuro mais promissor. O que os próximos 20 anos nos trarão?
“Minha esperança”, diz Rattis, “é que em 20 anos não estaremos mais lidando com o desmatamento. ‘Lembra-se daquela vez em que tivemos que convencer as pessoas a não derrubar a floresta? Estou muito feliz por termos superado isso’”.