Sunflower is an important crop in Parecis region of the Brazilian Cerrado. In 2014, the region produced 232.700 tons of sunflower grains, 45% ofthe national production. Sunflower production comes mostly from a system that has soybean as the main crop. The association of soybean and sunflower can reduce environmental impacts due to shared use of resources. This study performed a "cradle to gate" Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the soybean-sunflower production system used in Parecis region and compared its environmental profile to that of the monoculture of these two crops. We evaluated the impacts related to the use of soil (land use change emissions and liming) for each crop according to three allocation criteria: time of soil occupation, yield and gross margin. Although performance on "Climate Change" and some other impact categories had varied according to the allocation criteria used, the soybean-sunflower rotation crop system presented lower environmental impacts on every category when compared to soybean and sunflower monocultures with the same yield. Important impact reductionswere observed on "Climate change" (43%), "Terrestrial acidification" (26%) and "Particulate matter formation" (20%) categories.

Bovine livestock is a major anthropogenic greenhouse gas source via enteric methane. Brazilian bovine livestock is also responsible for emissions from land-use changes. In contrast, enteric emissions from extensive cattle systems in wetlands might have been overestimated. We provide scientific evidences that the human footprint of bovine products delivered by the Pantanal can be much lower. To assess this, a historical cloud-free imagery of the Landsat-5, spanning 26 years, were processed for mapping spatiotemporal landscapes in a Pantanal farm under cattle intensification studies. Eight landscape categories were identified according to spatiotemporal dynamics of interannual floods. The spatiotemporal map allowed in the field the adoption of stratified random samplings of chamber gas fluxes. The combination of stratified sampled landscapes with Monte Carlo simulations of measured methane emissions in wet and dry soils permitted to integrate landscapes emissions at annual basis with biased uncertainties. Assuming enteric emissions obtained for the Pantanal region, our results suggest that the landscapes methane emissions are 10-to 23-fold superior than the enteric emissions of traditional bovine systems. While enteric emissions seem negligible with respect to net farmland emissions, cattle livestock provide important environmental services like carbon recycling through non-competing herbivory. Moreover, cattle might be making use of a biomass that would undergo decomposition during the flooding phase. Our analysis thus indicate that enteric emissions from traditional bovine systems in flooding farmlands could be considered neutral. By contrast, intensification to improve the stocking rate should be accounted as net anthropogenic emissions. A case study of intensification allowed an increase of 48% in the stocking rate, which is associated with net anthropogenic emissions from 534 bovine animals or about 27 to 63 Mg of enteric CH 4 per year. In short, the

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A FEA e a USP respeitam os direitos autorais deste trabalho. Nós acreditamos que a melhor proteção contra o uso ilegítimo deste texto é a publicação online. Além de preservar o conteúdo motiva-nos oferecer à sociedade o conhecimento produzido no âmbito da universidade pública e dar publicidade ao esforço do pesquisador. Entretanto, caso não seja do interesse do autor manter o documento online, pedimos compreensão em relação à iniciativa e o contato pelo e-mail

O desenvolvimento de software para apoiar as ciências como uma nova plataforma de pesquisa e experimentação científica tem gerado contribuições para diversas áreas de conhecimento e é considerada tendência para os próximos anos. Neste artigo apresenta-se a plataforma +Precoce, voltada para o domínio da Pecuária que oferece modelos de sistemas de produção de gado de corte e permite que produtores rurais façam simulações considerando seus dados particulares. Os resultados obtidos mostram que a plataforma pode contribuir para a tomada de decisão no meio rural e gerar diversos benefícios, tais como a melhoria da qualidade da carne brasileira.

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