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ResumoA zona de transição Amazônia-Cerrado é caracterizada pela alta diversidade de ecossistemas, biodiversidade e condições climáticas. Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar evidências de mudanças climáticas na precipitação e temperatura no Estado do Maranhão. Os dados de normais climatológicas desde 1977 até 2014 provenientes de 12 estações meteorológicas do Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia, distribuídas no Estado foram utilizados para construir a série temporal de dados climáticos. Os dados foram divididos em dois grupos referentes às estações climáticas, seca e chuvosa. O teste de Mann-Kendall foi aplicado para detecção de tendências de aumento ou decréscimo, tanto na série temporal completa, quanto nos dados referentes aos períodos seco e chuvoso. Os resultados evidenciaram uma forte elevação na temperatura do ar em todas estações do Estado. No bioma amazônico em relação a precipitação, as estações de Bacabal e Zé Doca registraram tendências de aumento e diminuição, respectivamente. No bioma cerrado, as estações de Carolina e Colinas apresentaram tendências de aumento e diminuição, respectivamente. Os resultados apresentados neste trabalho mostraram que as mudanças climáticas ocorrem diferentemente no Estado do Maranhão, não necessariamente influenciada pelo bioma. Palavras-chave: mudanças globais, desastres naturais, sensoriamento remoto. Evidence of Climate Change in the Amazon-Savanna Transition Region in Maranhão State AbstractThe Amazon-Savanna transition zone is characterized by high diversity of ecosystems, biodiversity and climatic conditions. This work aims to investigate evidences of climate change on precipitation and temperature in the Maranhão state. The climatological normal data from 1977 to 2014 provided from 12 meteorological stations of National Meteorological Institute distributed in state area was used to build the climatic time series. This dataset was divided in two groups according to climate stations, dry and rain seasons. The Mann-Kendall test was applied to detect increase and decrease trends regarding complete time series and both, dry and rain season series. The results show a strong climate change in air temperature. In the amazon biome, Bacabal and Zé Doca stations registered increase and decrease tendencies, respectively. In the savanna biome, in Carolina and Colinas stations presented increase and decrease tendencies, respectively. The results presented in this work shows that climate change occurred differently in Maranhão state, not influenced necessarily by biome.

Climate can modulate human health at large spatial scales, but the influence of global, regional, and local environments remains poorly understood, especially for neglected diseases, such as mycoses. In this work, we present the correlation between climatic variables and hospitalizations for mycoses in Brazilian state capitals, evaluating the period of 2008 to 2016 at different time scales. The results indicate that climate modulates the hospitalizations for mycoses differently at annual and monthly time scales, with minimum temperature as a key climatic variable during periods of high prevalence in the 10 Brazilian capitals with the highest hospitalizations for mycoses rates. The greatest number of hospitalizations coincided with La Niña events, while a reduction was observed during El Niño events, thereby demonstrating the influence of the Pacific Interdecadal Climate Oscillation on the prevalence of mycoses in Brazil. At a regional scale, the mycoses burden in Brazil appears to respond differently to local and global climatic drivers.

Tropical forests play an important role as a reservoir of carbon and biodiversity, specifically forests in the Brazilian Amazon. However, the last decades have been marked by important changes in the Amazon, particularly those associated with climatic extremes. Quantifying the variability of rainfall patterns, hence, is essential for understanding changes and impacts of climate upon this ecosystem. The aim of this study was to analyse spatiotemporal trends in rainfall along the Brazilian Legal Amazon between 1998 and 2015. For this purpose, rainfall data derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite (TRMM) and nonparametric statistical methods, such as Mann–Kendall and Sen’s Slope, were used. Through this approach, some patterns were identified. No evidence of significant rainfall trends (p ≤ 0.05) for annual or monthly (except for September, which showed a significant negative trend) averages was found. However, significant monthly negative rainfall anomalies were found in 1998, 2005, 2010, and 2015, and positive in 1999, 2000, 2004, 2009, and 2013. The annual pixel-by-pixel analysis showed that 92.3% of the Brazilian Amazon had no rainfall trend during the period analysed, 4.2% had significant negative trends (p ≤ 0.05), and another 3.5% had significant positive trends (p ≤ 0.05). Despite no clear temporal rainfall trends for most of the Amazon had negative trends for September, corresponding to the peak of dry season in the majority of the region, and negative rainfall anomalies found in 22% of the years analysed, which indicate that water-dependent ecological processes may be negatively affected. Moreover, these processes may be under increased risk of disruption resulting from other drought-related events, such as wildfires, which are expect to be intensified by rainfall reduction during the Amazonian dry season.

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Sickle cell anaemia is one of the most common hemoglobinopathies worldwide and an important public health problem in Brazil. This study evaluated the prevalence of sickle cell anaemia and its traits in newborns from the Amazon-Savanna Transition Region in the state of Maranhão, Brazil. A cross-sectional study was carried out, based on data from neonatal screening tests performed in 2013–2015 in Maranhão. The Hardy-Weinberg theorem was applied to analyse the frequency of expected homozygotes based on HbSS phenotype. A spatial-temporal distribution analysis was performed to delimit the regions with the greatest number of newborn cases with sickle cell anaemia. Of 283,003 newborns, 162 were found to have sickle cell anaemia, while 10,794 had a sickle cell trait, with a prevalence of 0.05% and 3.8%, respectively. The prevalence of expected homozygotes was higher in the North Region and in the state capital of Maranhão. This study may contribute to existing social and public health actions or the creation of new strategies for sickle cell disease in endemic areas in Brazil to improve the quality of life.

Os extremos climáticos têm sido tema de grande interesse em pesquisas de mudanças climáticas por proporcionar subsídios para gestão de eventos de desastres naturais e causar desequilíbrios nos sistemas sociais e produtivos. Porém, as regiões de transição entre biomas e ecossistemas têm sido pouco exploradas. Dessa forma, o objetivo deste trabalho foi estimar os índices de extremos climáticos derivados da temperatura e precipitação na região de transição Amazônia-Cerrado no Estado do Maranhão no período de 1986 a 2016. Foi utilizado o programa computacional RClimdex e teste não paramétrico de Mann-Kendall para detectar as tendências de aumento ou decréscimo. As temperaturas máximas e mínimas mostraram uma forte tendência de aumento, evidenciando que tantos os dias quanto as noites estão mais quentes em todo os Estado. Em relação à precipitação, há uma grande variabilidade espaço-temporal, não havendo padrão bem definido, mas ocorrendo uma estação com aumento no volume de chuvas e umidade e outra com decréscimo estatisticamente significativo. Dessa forma, o clima está mudando de forma diferente em diferentes localidades no Estado do Maranhão.

Background The infections caused by fungi represent a global concern and an important cause of hospital admissions in endemic areas. The influence of socio‐environmental factors in infectious diseases has been documented; however, this phenomenon remains unclear regarding mycoses. Objectives This study aimed to analyse the spatio‐temporal dynamics of hospitalisations for mycoses (HM) and the association with socio‐economic and climate data in the Amazon‐Savanna Transition Region in the state of Maranhão, Brazil. Methods In this study, Spearman's correlation was applied to determine the correlation between HM, socio‐economic and climatic data obtained from national databases in the period from 1998 to 2016. Hospitalisations for mycoses data were spatialised and analysed using the local Moran's index. Results Our data revealed a negative and significant correlation between HM and socio‐economic data regarding population, demographic density, human development index, health facilities and sanitary sewage. Significant correlations were observed between HM and precipitation, maximum temperature and minimum temperature. The main modulating climatic variable was the minimum temperature. The spatial autocorrelation analysis showed the dynamics of HM in municipalities belonging to the different regions of the state influenced by socio‐economic conditions. We observed the presence of municipalities with high incidence of HM surrounded by others with low HM cases and vice versa. Conclusions Our results indicate that hospitalisations for mycoses represent an important indicator of socio‐environmental vulnerability in the Amazon‐Savanna transition region in Brazil. We encourage the adoption of measures to mitigate social and environmental impact on these diseases, especially in municipalities with low socio‐economic status.