Technical and Institutional Innovation in Agroforestry for Protected Areas Management in the Brazilian Amazon: Opportunities and Limitations

Tropical forest countries are struggling with the partially conflicting policy objectives of socioeconomic development, forest conservation, and safeguarding the livelihoods of local forest-dependent people. We worked with communities in the lower Tapajós region of the central Brazilian Amazon for over 10 years to understand their traditional and present land use practices, the constraints, and decision making processes imposed by their biophysical, socioeconomic, and political environment, and to facilitate development trajectories to improve the livelihoods of forest communities while conserving the forest on the farms and in the larger landscape. The work focused on riverine communities initially in the Tapajós National Forest and then in the Tapajós–Arapiuns Extractive Reserve. These communities have a century-old tradition of planting rubber agroforests which despite their abandonment during the 1990s still widely characterize the vegetation of the river banks, especially in the two protected areas where they are safe from the recent expansion of mechanized rice and soybean agriculture. The project evolved from the capacity-building of communities in techniques to increase the productivity of the rubber agroforests without breaking their low-input and low-risk logic, to the establishment of a community enterprise that allowed reserve inhabitants to reforest their own land with tree species of their choice and sell reforestation (not carbon) credits to local timber companies while retaining the ownership of the trees. By making land use practices economically more viable and ecologically more appropriate for protected areas, the project shows ways to strengthen the system of extractive and sustainable development reserves that protects millions of hectares of Amazon forest with the consent of the communities that inhabit them.     

Sunlight-driven environmental photodegradation of 2-chlorobiphenyl (PCB-1) in surface waters: kinetic study and mathematical simulations

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a family of highly toxic, resistant, and persistent organic pollutants, among which 2-chlorobiphenyl (PCB-1) is...     

Defining Nutrient and Biochemical Oxygen Demand Baselines for Tropical Rivers and Streams in São Paulo State (Brazil): A Comparison Between Reference and Impacted Sites

Determining reference concentrations in rivers and streams is an important tool for environmental management. Reference conditions for eutrophication-related water variables are unavailable for Brazilian freshwaters. We aimed to establish reference baselines for São Paulo State tropical rivers and streams for total phosphorus (TP) and nitrogen (TN), nitrogen-ammonia (NH₄ ⁺) and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) through the best professional judgment and the trisection methods. Data from 319 sites monitored by the São Paulo State Environmental Company (2005 to 2009) and from the 22 Water Resources Management Units in São Paulo State were assessed (N = 27,131). We verified that data from different management units dominated by similar land cover could be analyzed together (Analysis of Variance, P = 0.504). Cumulative frequency diagrams showed that industrialized management units were characterized by the worst water quality (e.g. average TP of 0.51 mg/L), followed by agricultural watersheds. TN and NH₄ ⁺ were associated with urban percentages and population density (Spearman Rank Correlation Test, P < 0.05). Best professional judgment and trisection (median of lower third of all sites) methods for determining reference concentrations showed agreement: 0.03 &; 0.04 mg/L (TP), 0.31 &; 0.34 mg/L (TN), 0.06 &; 0.10 mg-N/L (NH₄ ⁺) and 2 &; 2 mg/L (BOD), respectively. Our reference concentrations were similar to TP and TN reference values proposed for temperate water bodies. These baselines can help with water management in São Paulo State, as well as providing some of the first such information for tropical ecosystems.     

Assessment of trace metals pollution in estuarine sediments using SEM-AVS and ERM?CERL predictions

In this paper a PSIAC-based multi-parameter fuzzy pattern recognition (MPFPR) model is proposed and applied for classifying and ranking the potential soil erosion (PSE). In this approach, standard value matrix is used to define the membership degrees of each catchment to each class and the feature values are used for alternative ranking. The characteristic of PSE for each class is expressed by linguistic variables. The proposed method is straightforward, easy to understand, very practical, and its results may easily be interpreted. To assess the performance of the model, the results of PSIAC MPFPR and original PSIAC method are interpreted and compared with the observed data. It is shown that the proposed approach reflects the fuzzy nature of the soil erosion more efficiently and is quite robust for application in real world cases.     

Photochemical persistence of sulfa drugs in aqueous medium: kinetic study and mathematical simulations

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This study aimed at investigating the photochemical behavior of sulfa drugs containing five and six-membered heterocyclic substituents...     

The link between pharmaceuticals and cyanobacteria: a review regarding ecotoxicological,ecological, and sanitary aspects

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Cyanobacteria are important for ecosystem functioning, but eutrophication may affect the surrounding biome by losing ecosystem services and/or through...     

Effects of lead exposure on salivary glands of rats: insights into the oxidative biochemistry and glandular morphology

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This study aimed to investigate the effects of lead (Pb) exposure on parotid and submandibular glands through morphological aspects as well as the...     

Methylmercury genotoxicity: a novel effect in human cell lines of the central nervous system

Methylmercury is an important source of environmental contamination and the central nervous system (CNS) is one of the main target organs. Methylmercury genotoxicity was already demonstrated in peripherical tissues but was never detected in the brain. Thus, the objective of this work was to verify its genotoxic effect using brain cell lines. Glioblastoma (U373) and neuroblastoma (B103) human cell lines were exposed to methylmercury (0-10 microM). By measuring cellular viability, concentrations inducing <20% of cellular death (P<0.05) were selected: 1 and 0.1 microM. To detect micronuclei, 200,000 cells were treated with methylmercury for 24 h, and then incubated with cytochalasin B (2 microg/ml) for 72 h (U373) or 48 h (B103). The binucleation index, frequency of micronucleated cells, micronucleation index, metaphasic index and index of nucleoplasmic bridges were determined. Statistical analysis showed indices and percentages significantly higher (P<0.05) in methylmercury-treated cells. Each cell line was shown to be differently sensitive to each biomarker of genotoxic damage, which seems to indicate the existence of different mechanisms of toxicity. This work demonstrates, for the first time, MeHg ability to provoke genotoxicity in cells of brain origin with relatively low levels of exposure.