Expansion of the cattle and soy industries in the Amazon basin has increased deforestation rates and will soon push all-weather highways into the region's core. In the face of this growing pressure, a comprehensive conservation strategy for the Amazon basin should protect its watersheds, the full range of species and ecosystem diversity, and the stability of regional climates. Here we report that protected areas in the Amazon basin--the central feature of prevailing conservation approaches--are an important but insufficient component of this strategy, based on policy-sensitive simulations of future deforestation. By 2050, current trends in agricultural expansion will eliminate a total of 40% of Amazon forests, including at least two-thirds of the forest cover of six major watersheds and 12 ecoregions, releasing 32 +/- 8 Pg of carbon to the atmosphere. One-quarter of the 382 mammalian species examined will lose more than 40% of the forest within their Amazon ranges. Although an expanded and enforced network of protected areas could avoid as much as one-third of this projected forest loss, conservation on private lands is also essential. Expanding market pressures for sound land management and prevention of forest clearing on lands unsuitable for agriculture are critical ingredients of a strategy for comprehensive conservation.

No abstract

Attractive and repulsive tip-sample interaction regimes of a force microscope operated with an amplitude modulation feedback were investigated as a function of tip-sample separation, free amplitude, and sample properties. In the attractive regime, a net attractive force dominates the amplitude reduction while in the repulsive regime the amplitude reduction is dominated by a net repulsive force. The transition between both regimes may be smooth or steplike, depending on free amplitude and sample properties. A steplike discontinuity is always a consequence of the existence of two oscillation states for the same conditions. Stiff materials and small free amplitudes give rise to steplike transitions while the use of large free amplitudes produce smooth transitions. Simulations performed on compliant samples showed cases where the cantilever dynamics is fully controlled by a net attractive force. Phase-shift measurements provide a practical method to determine the operating regime. Finally, we discuss the influence of those regimes in data acquisition and image interpretation. ͓S0163-1829͑99͒03231-2͔

Protected areas (PAs) now shelter 54% of the remaining forests of the Brazilian Amazon and contain 56% of its forest carbon. However, the role of these PAs in reducing carbon fluxes to the atmosphere from deforestation and their associated costs are still uncertain. To fill this gap, we analyzed the effect of each of 595 Brazilian Amazon PAs on deforestation using a metric that accounts for differences in probability of deforestation in areas of pairwise comparison. We found that the three major categories of PA (indigenous land, strictly protected, and sustainable use) showed an inhibitory effect, on average, between 1997 and 2008. Of 206 PAs created after the year 1999, 115 showed increased effectiveness after their designation as protected. The recent expansion of PAs in the Brazilian Amazon was responsible for 37% of the region's total reduction in deforestation between 2004 and 2006 without provoking leakage. All PAs, if fully implemented, have the potential to avoid 8.0 ± 2.8 Pg of carbon emissions by 2050. Effectively implementing PAs in zones under high current or future anthropogenic threat offers high payoffs for reducing carbon emissions, and as a result should receive special attention in planning investments for regional conservation. Nevertheless, this strategy demands prompt and predictable resource streams. The Amazon PA network represents a cost of US$147 ± 53 billion (net present value) for Brazil in terms of forgone profits and investments needed for their consolidation. These costs could be partially compensated by an international climate accord that includes economic incentives for tropical countries that reduce their carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.Amazon Region Protected Areas | effectiveness | reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation | simulation model | opportunity cost

We fabricated a device that controls the motion of flux quanta in a niobium superconducting film grown on an array of nanoscale triangular pinning potentials. The controllable rectification of the vortex motion is due to the asymmetry of the fabricated magnetic pinning centers. The reversal in the direction of the vortex flow is explained by the interaction between the vortices trapped on the magnetic nanostructures and the interstitial vortices. The applied magnetic field and input current strength can tune both the polarity and magnitude of the rectified vortex flow. Our ratchet system is explained and modeled theoretically, taking the interactions between particles into consideration.

The general features of tapping mode operation of a scanning force microscope are presented. Relevant factors of tapping mode such as forces, deformation, and contact times can be calculated as functions of tapping frequency, amplitude damping, and sample elastic and viscoelastic properties. Typical contact times per oscillation are about 10-7 s for hard samples and 6 × 10-7 s for soft materials, i.e., between one and two orders of magnitude smaller than their equivalents in contact mode force microscopy. The model proposed allows the determination of the phase lag between excitation signal and cantilever response. Major factors to phase contrast are viscoelastic properties and adhesion forces with little participation from elastic properties. Experiments performed on droplets of glycerin deposited on graphite illustrate the ability to image them by recording phase changes.

Contrary to common sense, the population aging process is due to the decline in fertility rather than mortality. The aging process began around the end of the 19th century in a num

Force curves taken during a load-unload cycle show the presence of a hysteresis loop. The area enclosed by the loop is used to measure the energy dissipated by the tip-sample interaction in tapping-mode scanning force microscopy. The values of the energy loss obtained from force curves are compared with the results derived from a model based on phase shift measurements. The agreement obtained between both methods demonstrates that for the same operating conditions, the higher the phase shift the larger the amount of energy dissipated by the tip-sample interaction. It also confirms the prediction that phase-contrast images can only arise if there are tip-sample inelastic interactions.