Beyond Carbon: The Contributions of South American Tropical Humid and Subhumid Forests to Ecosystem Services

Abstract

Tropical forests are key habitats for diverse organisms, and because of their wide global distribution, rich biodiversity, and long history of human use, they are also essential for providing a wide range of ecosystem services (ESs;Brandon, 2015; Brockerhoff et al., 2017;Gibson et al., 2011;Mori et al., 2017). Considerable attention has been devoted to tropical forests and their role as a natural climate solution for mitigating climate change. It is estimated that about 30% of all CO 2 emitted by human activities is removed from the atmosphere by these forests (Le Quéré et al., 2018). The important role of tropical forests as a carbon sink and stock has historically guided conservation pacts, programs, and policies for establishing targets associated with carbon storage and climate change mitigation. This role was important in developing several articles of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (Swingland et al., 2002) and explicit policies for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through the REDD+ agreement (Pistorius, 2012). Several countries also set ambitious goals for restoring forests to reduce emissions or sequester carbon in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 2015 Paris Agreement. The land use, land cover change, and forestry (LULCCF) sector is included in many countries' first nationally determined contributions (NDCs) but with differing levels of specificity. Assuming full implementation of NDCs, Grassi et al. (2017) show that land use-and forests, in particular-emerges as a key component of the Paris Agreement: global land use will turn from a net anthropogenic source during 1990-2010 (1.3 ± 1.1 Gt CO 2 e yr −1 ) to a net sink of carbon by 2030 (up to −1.1 ± 0.5 Gt CO 2 e yr −1 ) and would provide a quarter of countries' planned emission reductions. Two tropical countries stand out regarding the magnitude of the LULCCF contribution: Brazil set ambitious goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030 with

Hydrological response of a headwater catchment in Southeast Brazil—Threshold patterns of stormflow response

“…Understanding both baseflow (i.e., main discharge component that maintains water availability during dry spells) and stormflow (i.e., quick flow prompted by rainfall events that can lead to flash floods) is key to understanding flow regimes in headwater catchments (Barnes, 2001; Blöschl et al, 2019; Viviroli et al, 2020) as well as the impacts of land‐use/cover changes on both high and low flows (Borma et al, 2022; Bruijnzeel, 1990; Filoso et al, 2017).…”