Drought and fire interactions on secondary Brazilian vegetation

Abstract

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing science and the society today is how to predict and monitor the consequences of global change for life on Earth (Higgins & Scheiter 2012). The speed of changes in land use and climate, together with fast diversity losses, pollution and changes in the hydrological cycle urge rapid answers for ensuring the endurance of biological diversity, ecosystems processes and human welfare. Brazil holds more than 20% of the Earth's total terrestrial biodiversity in 6 biomes, of which the Amazonian, Cerrado and Atlantic Forest Biomes originally represented more than 85% of the country's total area (IBGE, 2004). However, land use changes and deforestation have reduced this area to less than 60% of its original extent, and many of these remaining areas sustain disturbed and secondary forests rather than undisturbed primary vegetation (FAO, 2010). Furthermore, the climate is getting warmer and this is having rapid impacts on the water cycle - precipitation, evaporation, relative humidity, soil moisture, and runoff (IPCC 2014; Gloor et al. 2013).Thus overall this proposal will provide the opportunity of providing results and derivables associated to the projects BIOmes of Brasil - Resilience, rEcovery, and Diversity (BIO-RED), and to the FAPESP 2017/16923-1. These projects aim to establish the link between biodiversity, carbon sequestration, nutrient assimilation and ecosystem functioning (net primary productivity and nutrient use efficiency) under a warming world and to understand the natural recovery of disturbed ecosystems to give new insights for management and conservation. Dr. Oliveras is a key partner in these projects, and her research is focused on understanding the processes of forest recovery after degradation drivers such as fire and drought, especially in the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest biomes. (AU)