Ecosystem Studies & Management
South America
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Struggling Towards Sustainability in Amazon Fishery Resources: Along the tributaries of the Amazon River, there are thousands of riverine communities conducting artisanal, small-scale fishing activities. These fishing activities have been poorly studied and managed even though they are responsible for most (~60%) of the total fish catch in the Amazon. These fisheries usually involve riverine families who go fishing almost every day primarily for subsistence but also for commercial purposes, thus providing them with their main source of animal protein and income. We assessed the sustainability of fishery resources in small-scale fisheries in the Lower Amazon region. Our study focused on the river floodplains near the city of Santarém, where population growth is rapidly increasing pressure on fish resources and where fishing communities have been developing one of the Amazon’s most advanced systems for fisheries management. |
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The Amazon varzea, the core area of the Amazon floodplain, is one of the largest and most biodiverse tropical wetland systems in the world. It has also been a major focus of human settlement and economic activity for much of the human history of the basin. Its fertile soils and abundant plant and animal resources supported some of the densest and most politically complex societies in the Amazon basin. The scientists and technical staff of the Woods Hole Research Center and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) are working with floodplain communities, grassroots organizations and key government agencies, to develop a multi-scale co-management system integrating floodplain settlements, grassroots organizations and municipal, state and federal land tenure and management agencies. |
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Community Forestry and Sustainable Livelihoods along Brazil’s Tapajós River: Community forestry is widely regarded as a promising strategy through which smallholders can increase income and improve quality of life, while conserving local forest resources. One such initiative is the Caboclo Workshops of the Tapajós. This approach combines small-scale, technologically and organizationally simple production of high quality finished products for green consumer markets. Since the early 2000s, the Woods Hole Research Center and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) have worked with traditional communities on the shores of the Tapajós River to develop forest management systems supplying local furniture workshops. |
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Feedbacks between Water and Deforestation in Tropical South America: Tropical South America contains the world’s largest continuous tropical forest and savannah ecosystems. This region has undergone explosive development and deforestation in the last 50 years. Already about 60 percent of the savanna and about 10 percent of the rainforest in this large region have been converted to cattle pasture and agriculture. Deforestation and forest degradation result in a complex set of changes to climate and the water balance at small and large scales; increasing runoff, sediment flux and stream flow and potentially altering rainfall patterns. Woods Hole Research Center scientists are leading field and computer-based projects to better understand the consequences of these changes and possible mitigation strategies. |
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The cerrado, or savanna, ecosystem is the second largest biome of tropical South America. Although deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has received much attention, most of the Brazilian deforestation has taken place, and continues to take place, in the savanna environments outside of the Amazon basin. In this project, a team of Woods Hole Research Center scientists and collaborators, including remote sensing experts, economists, hydrologists, and biogeochemists, will quantify the socio-economic drivers of sugarcane expansion, the amount of cerrado land suitable for sugar, the potential trajectories of future deforestation, and the environmental impacts of land-use change. |
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Promoting Good Land Stewardship through the Registry of Social-Environmental Responsibility: The Registry of Socio-environmental Responsibility (RSR) is an initiative of the Aliança da Terra (AT), the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), and the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) that unifies property owners who commit to responsible land stewardship in Brazil. Begun in 2006, the RSR creates a link between the growing demands for responsible land use practices coming from commodity markets and demands from the emerging carbon market for reductions in carbon emissions from deforestation. |
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Understanding Fire in the Brazilian Amazon: Fire is an important agent of transformation in the Amazon landscape. It is used as a management tool for agricultural lands but it often escapes into neighboring forests and causes ecological damage that is not well documented or understood. Since 2004, the Woods Hole Research Center and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute have been conducting experimental burns on 150 hectares of forest on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Researchers are learning how these accidental fires may affect the vigor, health, and biodiversity of these forests, whether recurring fire may threaten the very existence of the forest through regional climate feedbacks, and how the regional carbon balance is affected. |
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Agricultural expansion in the Amazon basin impacts both local and continental hydrological cycles. A small number of observational and modeling studies currently suggest that deforestation leads to large changes in the energy and water balance at small to large scales. This also causes ramifications for the climate of the much larger Amazon basin because it increases runoff and decreases local rainfall. This project explores that key issue through an instrument installation and data collection campaign at Fazendo Tanguro, a collaborative field research site located in Mato Grosso, Brazil. |
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