In striking contrast to heartening events in the adjacent Amazon, Brazil's Cerrado biome has seen continued deforestation over the past decade. Though approved in 2012, no study evaluated the impacts of new Brazilian Forest Code (FC) revision on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here, we report the first assessment of the likely loss and gain in biodiversity and ecosystem services expected if the FC is properly enforced across 200 million hectares of the Cerrado. We also discuss the challenges associated to compliance with the law and present opportunities for conservation.Establishing restoration programmes in private properties with currently less native vegetation than required by the FC could create habitat for 25% more threatened species than now found in these places and could also increase water security and carbon stock in 56.6 MtC. More important, trading environmental reserve quotas coupled with the strategic expansion of protected areas on private and public land could definitely rescue the Cerrado from the brink. K E Y W O R D Scarbon stock, deforestation, environmental policy, nature's contribution to people, restoration, water provision

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In an effort to avoid species loss, scientists have focused their efforts on the mechanisms making some species more prone to extinction than others. However, species show different responses to threats given their evolutionary history, behavior, and intrinsic biological features. We used bird biological features and external threats to (1) understand the multiple pathways driving Brazilian bird species to extinction, (2) to investigate if and how extinction risk is geographically structured, and (3) to quantify how much diversity is currently represented inside protected areas. We modeled the extinction risk of 1557 birds using classification trees and evaluated the relative contribution of each biological feature and external threat in predicting extinction risk. We also quantified the proportion of species and their geographic range currently protected by the network of Brazilian protected areas. The optimal classification tree showed different pathways to bird extinction. Habitat conversion was the most important predictor driving extinction risk though other variables, such as geographic range size, type of habitat, hunting or trapping and trophic guild, were also relevant in our models. Species under higher extinction risk were concentrated mainly in the Cerrado Biodiversity Hotspot and were not quite represented inside protected areas, neither in richness nor range. Predictive models could assist conservation actions, and this study could contribute by highlighting the importance of natural history and ecology in these actions.

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A preservação da qualidade das águas é um fator importante para o equilíbrio aquático e para o abastecimento da população que utiliza o corpo hídrico. Esta pesquisa justifica-se pela influência do regime pluviométrico sobre os corpos hídricos com alterações dos parâmetros físico-químicos destes, que interferem diretamente na qualidade da água dos rios e podem ser ocasionadas por diferentes fatores, como o aumento ou diminuição do índice de chuvas de uma região. Nesse sentido o objetivo deste trabalho é fazer um estudo da influência do índice pluviométrico do município de Paragominas-PA nos parâmetros pH, Turbidez, Cor e DBO das águas do rio Uraim utilizando para isso, o software MATrix LABoratory -MATLAB. Quanto ao método, ele foi hipotético-dedutivo, com isso a pesquisa torna-se observativa, sistemática, direta, com caráter exploratório. Os dados obtidos indicaram forte relação entre as variáveis analisadas, que entre os parâmetros hídricos o pH sofre interferências de parâmetros como a turbidez, cor, DBO, especialmente no período chuvoso. Além disso, devido a decomposição do material orgânico e a alta produtividade de algas presentes na água, influencia no aumento de microrganismos fotossintetizantes no recurso hídrico elevando as taxas de gás carbônico (CO2). Com uma base de dados consistente no que tange os índices pluviométricos do município de Paragominas e alguns parâmetros relacionados com a qualidade da agua do rio Uraim, observou-se a importância do uso de ferramentas computacionais para avaliação e verificação dos parâmetros da qualidade da agua.

In the face of climate change threats, governments are drawing attention to policies for mitigating its effects on biodiversity. However, the lack of distribution data makes predictions at species level a difficult task, mainly in regions of higher biodiversity. To overcome this problem, we use native landcover as a surrogate biodiversity, because it can represent specialized habitat for species, and investigate the effects of future climate change on Brazilian biomes. We characterize the climatic niches of native landcover and use ecological niche modeling to predict the potential distribution under current and future climate scenarios. Our results highlight expansion of the distribution of open vegetation and the contraction of closed forests. Drier Brazilian biomes, like Caatinga and Cerrado, are predicted to expand their distributions, being the most resistant to climate change impacts. However, these would also be affected by losses of their closed forest enclaves and their habitat-specific or endemic species. Replacement by open vegetation and overall reductions are a considerable risk for closed forest, threatening Amazon and Atlantic forest biomes. Here, we evidence the impacts of climate change on Brazilian biomes, and draw attention to the necessity for management and attenuation plans to guarantee the future of Brazilian biodiversity.

Species extinction risk is associated with intrinsic features such as body mass, geographic range size and diet, and also with external threats, mainly anthropogenic pressure. Current biological knowledge on seascapes still falls behind knowledge from terrestrial ecosystems, and understanding the pathways to extinction for declining groups, such as seabirds, is of paramount importance. Here we provide the first estimates of seabird extinction risk derived from regressive models associating species intrinsic features and external threats, and evaluation of effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPA). We aimed to: (i) understand how intrinsic and external variables interact to set pathways to seabird extinction; (ii) define which variables are most important; (iii) evaluate the geographic structure of extinction risk; and (iv) evaluate the effectiveness of Brazilian MPAs in representing species at high and low risk. We used classification tree to model extinction risk and random forest to evaluate the importance of each variable. Our models were accurate to predict relative extinction risk of threatened species. Breeding range size and threat from fishing vessel were the most important correlates of extinction risk. Brazilian MPAs are not effective to protect seabirds and are short to cover a minimum of 10% of species ranges. We show that correlates of extinction risk act in a synergistic way and suggest that conservation of seabirds in Brazil should be considered high priority given their low current level of protection.

Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) have different performances in predicting potential geographic distributions. Here we meta‐analyzed the likely effects of climate change on the potential geographic distribution of 1,205 bird species from the Neotropical region, modeled using eight ENMs and three Atmosphere‐Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCM). We considered the variability in ENMs performance to estimate a weighted mean difference between potential geographic distributions for baseline and future climates. On average, potential future ranges were projected to be from 25.7% to 44.5% smaller than current potential ranges across species. However, we found that 0.2% to 18.3% of the total variance in range shifts occurred “within species” (i.e., owing to the use of different modeling techniques and climate models) and 81.7% to 99.8% remained between species (i.e., it could be explained by ecological correlates). Using meta‐analytical techniques akin to regression, we also showed that potential range shifts are barely predicted by bird biological traits. We demonstrated that one can combine and reduce species‐specific effects with high uncertainty in ENMs and also explore potential causes of climate change effect on species using meta‐analytical tools. We also highlight that the search for powerful correlates of climate change‐induced range shifts can be a promising line of investigation.