Publications

Coelho, A., Aguiar, A., Toledo, P., Araujo, R., do Canto, O., Folhes, R. & Adami, M. 2021. Rural landscapes and agrarian spaces under soybean expansion dynamics: A case study of the Santarem region, Brazilian Amazonia. Regional Environmental Change 21(4) 100.

Following the boom of soybean production from 2000 to 2006 in the Santarém region of the Brazilian Amazon, the mechanized agricultural area remained stable, unlike other regions. Deforestation was controlled, but this initial expansion led to the restructuring of the agrarian space in the region. Given this scenario, we aimed to understand the mechanized agricultural expansion effects in the region by comparing the periods 199...

Silva Bezerra, F., Randow, C., Assis, T., Bezerra, K., Tejada, G., Castro, A., de Paula Gomes, D., Avancini, R., Aguiar, A.. 2021. New land use change scenarios for Brazil: refining global SSPs with a regional spatially-explicit allocation model. bioRxiv, http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.12.456156

The future of land use and cover change in Brazil, in particular due to deforestation and forest restoration processes, is critical for the future of global climate and biodiversity, given the richness of its five biomes. These changes in Brazil depend on the interlink between global factors, due to its role as one of the main exporters of commodities in the world, and the national to local institutional, socioeconomic and bio...

Downing, A., Wong, G.Y., Dyer, M., Aguiar, A. P., Selomane, O., Jimenez Aceituno, A. 2021. When the whole is less than the sum of all parts – Tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives. Global Environmental Change Volume 69, July 2021, 102306, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102306

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are described as integrated and indivisible, where sustainability challenges must be addressed across sectors and scales to achieve global-level sustainability. However, SDG monitoring mostly focuses on tracking progress at national-levels, for each goal individually. This approach ignores local and cross-border impacts of national policies and assumes that global-level ...

Lemos, C., Andrade, P., Rodrigues, R., Hissa, L., Aguiar, A.. 2021. Combining regional to local restoration goals in the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Regional Environmental Change. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01792-0

To achieve regional and international large-scale restoration goals with minimum costs, several restoration commitments rely on natural regeneration, a passive and inexpensive strategy. However, natural regeneration potential may vary within the landscape, mainly due to its historical context. In this work, we use spatially explicit restoration scenarios to explore how and where, within a given region, multiple restoration co...

Harmáčková, Z.V., Blättler, L., Aguiar, A.P.D. et al. 2021. Linking multiple values of nature with future impacts: value-based participatory scenario development for sustainable landscape governance. Sustain Sci, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00953-8

Reaching sustainable and just futures for people and nature requires tackling complex social-ecological challenges across multiple scales, from local to global. Pathways towards such futures are largely driven by people’s decisions and actions, underpinned by multiple types of motivations and values. Thus, understanding the link between potential futures and the values underpinning them represents a key question of current su...

Carvalho, R., de Aguiar, A.P.D. and Amaral, S., 2020. Diversity of cattle raising systems and its effects over forest regrowth in a core region of cattle production in the Brazilian Amazon. Regional Environmental Change, 20(2), pp.1-15.

Roughly 60% of all deforested lands in the Brazilian Amazon are covered with pastures, putting cattle raising in evidence as a major driver of deforestation and also of forests’ regrowth. Still, the role of cattle raising diversity in the landscape dynamics of this region remains poorly understood. To contribute to this discussion, we combined data from semi-structured interviews and quantitative spatially explicit methods to ...

Schneider, A., Hinton, J., Collste, D., González, T.S., Cortes-Calderon, S.V. and Aguiar, A.P.D., 2020. Can transnational corporations leverage systemic change towards a ‘sustainable’future?. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(4), pp.491-492.

To the Editor — We welcome the idea that transnational corporations (TNCs) can play a central role in the protection of the biosphere, recently contributed by Folke et al. 1 . It is certainly crucial to understand how TNCs affect the biosphere. While the authors provide a comprehensive overview of the impact of TNCs on the biosphere and propose some pathways through which TNCs might contribute to the stabilization of the E...

Assis, T.O., de Aguiar, A.P.D., von Randow, C., de Paula Gomes, D.M., Kury, J.N., Ometto, J.P.H. and Nobre, C.A., 2020. CO2 emissions from forest degradation in Brazilian Amazon. Environmental Research Letters, 15(10), p.104035.

Forest degradation is widespread around the world, due to multiple factors such as unsustainable logging, agriculture, invasive species, fire, fuelwood gathering, and livestock grazing. In the Brazilian Amazon forest degradation from August 2006 to July 2016 reached 1,1 869 800 ha. The processes of forest degradation are still poorly understood, being a missing component in anthropogenic CO 2 emission estimates in tropical f...

Aguiar, A.P., Collste, D., Harmáckova, Z.V., Pereira, L., Selomane, O. et. al. 2020. Co-designing global target-seeking scenarios: A cross-scale participatory process for capturing multiple perspectives on pathways to sustainability. Global Environmental Change, Volume 65, November 2020, 102198, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102198

The United Nations 2030 Agenda catalysed the development of global target-seeking sustainability-oriented scenarios representing alternative pathways to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Implementing the SDGs requires connected actions across local, national, regional, and global levels; thus, target-seeking scenarios need to reflect alternative options and tensions across those scales. We argue that the design o...

Carvalho, R., Adami, M., Amaral, S., Bezerra, F.G., de Aguiar, A.P.D. 2019. Changes in secondary vegetation dynamics in a context of decreasing deforestation rates in Pará, Brazilian Amazon. Applied Geography Volume 106, May 2019, Pages 40-49

Tropical secondary vegetation is of particular interest as carbon sinks , potential lands for agriculture and livestock expansion, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services . Until mid-2000s estimates of secondary vegetation in the Brazilian Amazon indicated a progressive increase of this cover, however after 2010, only 1197 km 2 of additional secondary vegetation were generated, while 42,040 km 2 were conver...