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Fires are one of the main sources of disturbance in fire-sensitive ecosystems such as the Amazon. Any attempt to characterize their impacts and establish actions aimed at combating these events presupposes the correct identification of the affected areas. However, accurate mapping of burned areas in humid tropical forest regions remains a challenging task. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of four operational BA products (MCD64A1, Fire_cci, GABAM and MapBiomas Fogo) on a regional scale in the southwestern Amazon and propose a new approach to BA mapping using fraction images extracted from data cubes of the Brazilian orbital sensors CBERS-4/WFI and CBERS-4A/WFI. The methodology for detecting burned areas consisted of applying the Linear Spectral Mixture Model to the images from the CBERS-4/WFI and CBERS-4A/WFI data cubes to generate shadow fraction images, which were then segmented and classified using the ISOSEG non-supervised algorithm. Regression and similarity analyses based on regular grid cells were carried out to compare the BA mappings. The results showed large discrepancies between the mappings in terms of total area burned, land use and land cover affected (forest and non-forest) and spatial location of the burned area. The global products MCD64A1, GABAM and Fire_cci tended to underestimate the area burned in the region, with Fire_cci underestimating BA by 88%, while the regional product MapBiomas Fogo was the closest to the reference, underestimating by only 7%. The burned area estimated by the method proposed in this work (337.5 km2) was 12% higher than the reference and showed a small difference in relation to the MapBiomas Fogo product (18% more BA). These differences can be explained by the different datasets and methods used to detect burned areas. The adoption of global products in regional studies can be critical in underestimating the total area burned in sensitive regions. Our study highlights the need to develop approaches aimed at improving the accuracy of current global products, and the development of regional burned area products may be more suitable for this purpose. Our proposed approach based on WFI data cubes has shown high potential for generating more accurate regional burned area maps, which can refine BA estimates in the Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy sustainability indicators are essential for evaluating and measuring energy systems' environmental, social, and economic impact. These indicators can be used to assess the sustainability of different energy sources, such as renewable or fossil fuels, as well as the performance of energy systems in various regions or countries. The goal of this paper is to propose a new energy sustainability index based on fuzzy logic for the Amazon region. The fuzzy inference system enabled the operationalization of subjective sustainability concepts, resulting in a final index that can evaluate the performance of the states in the Legal Amazon and compare them to each other. The results indicated that Mato Grosso had the highest ranking, followed by Tocantins, Amapá, Roraima, Rondônia, Pará, Acre, Maranhão, and Amazonas in the last position. These findings demonstrate that the selected indicators and the final index are effective tools for evaluating the energy sustainability of the Amazon region and can aid public managers in making decisions and proposing sustainable regional development policies for the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aimed to present an analysis of public policies and the universal supply of drinking water in the municipality of Itaituba, in the state of Pará, Brazil. The methodology used was exploratory research, made possible through a bibliographic survey and interviews. In 2017, information from IBGE indicated that 46.53% of households in Itaituba were served with treated water supply services by the state (COSANPA) and municipal (CASITA) agencies. The survey found that 4,140 homes are supplied by CASITA, with untreated water. It was concluded that, in the municipality of Itaituba, public policies are still at a much lower level of execution, estimating that around 50% of the households in Itaituba do not receive drinking water from either agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the stigma associated with cutaneous leishmaniasis, a vector-transmitted parasitic disease, focuses on aesthetic appearance affectation as the leading cause of stigmatisation. However, Indigenous populations in the hinterland of Amazonian Ecuador trigger stigma expressions by recognising (muco)cutaneous leishmaniasis, primarily through atypical smell, followed by the odd voice sound, appearance and taste. This empirical way of recognising symptoms relies on embodied forms of identifying a disease, contrasting the Western supremacy of visuality and demanding to be understood via multi-sensorial anthropology. Through ethnographic research and data retrieved from eighty-three semistructured interviews and fifteen focus groups in seven Ecuadorian ethnic groups – including six Indigenous groups in the Amazon region – this paper analyses how the sensorium is a health thermometer. Findings reveal that differentiated cultural responses to a sense of peril, contagion and social (self)rejection, understood as stigma expressions, are linked to the holistic approach to health (or well-being) shared by Indigenous populations. In forest societies, well-being is explained through successful (non-)human relationships, and disease permeates through bodies that lack balanced relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the media industry in the US by analyzing Big Tech's entrance into film and television production and the rise of streaming distribution technology. Through a case study of Prime Video, Amazon's prize streaming platform, this study explores how streaming technology has disrupted film and television from multiple perspectives, subjecting the industry to new logics of internet distribution, rooted in platforms, artificial intelligence, digital delivery systems, and big data. In the Big Tech worldview, disruption is an inherently progressive development. However, an analysis of Prime Video reveals how disruption is only the latest manifestation of conglomeration and convergence in the film and television industries. By uncovering the industry logics that govern the era of streaming, this paper analyzes the streaming industry of the present while taking into consideration the cable period in the past to account for the rapid technological development in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates International Development Cooperation projects carried out in the Brazilian Amazon in recent decades, analyzing also the involved agents and resources. To achieve this, we referred to information published by the Brazilian Agency of Cooperation and international funding providers. The results indicate the formation of a complex ecosystem comprising interrelated and independent actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Brazilian Amazon is marked by attempts at infrastructure-driven development. The construction of the Belo Monte dam, the third-largest in the world, brought chaotical and rapid urbanization to surrounding cities. This paper answered whether the Belo Monte dam impacted the level of violent crime in the region after Altamira was ranked as the most violent city in Brazil in 2015. Following a difference-in-difference approach, I explore the timing of the Belo Monte dam construction and the distance from the construction site to identify the causal effect of unplanned urbanization on homicide rate. In two exogenous shocks, the beginning (2011) and the end of the construction (2015), I estimated a significant rise in the homicide rate in closer cities. The results are driven by criminal activity, with drug trafficking being one of the channels behind the rising homicide rate during construction. The homicide victims are mainly the young male population causing a significant loss of human capital. The increasing homicide rate after the end of the construction indicates that the Belo Monte dam may have a long-term effect on the violence level in the region. Violence imposes high social costs and may jeopardize future growth in the Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the way of the modern lexicon culture and civilization in the historical-ethnographic thought of José Veríssimo (1857-1916). Thus, it was argued that miscegenation is the reading key Veríssimo ponders the amazonian society as a comprehensive way of life between civilization and barbarism. This key faced the issue of the formation of nationality, by proposing the Amazonian point of view in the coordinates of Brazilian miscegenation: tapuio as a national element in the Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying urban patterns in the cities in the Brazilian Amazon can help to understand the impact of human actions on the environment, to protect local cultures, and secure the cultural heritage of the region. The objective of this study is to produce a classification of intra-urban patterns in Amazonian cities. Concretely, we produce a set of Urban and Socio-Environmental Patterns (USEPs) in the cities of Santarém and Cametá in Pará, Brazilian Amazon. The contributions of this study are as follows: (1) we use a reproducible research framework based on remote sensing data and machine learning techniques; (2) we integrate spatial data from various sources into a cellular grid, separating the variables into environmental, urban morphological, and socioeconomic dimensions; (3) we generate variables specific to the Amazonian context; and (4) we validate these variables by means of a field visit to Cametá and comparison with patterns described in other works. Machine learning-based clustering is useful to identify seven urban patterns in Santarém and eight urban patterns in Cametá. The urban patterns are semantically explainable and are consistent with the existing scientific literature. The paper provides reproducible and open research that uses only open software and publicly available data sources, making the data product and code available for modification and further contributions to spatial data science analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainability of livelihoods and food security by small-scale colonists in the Amazon have been associated with the dynamics of land use and land cover as well as the ability of combining distinct sources of income and welfare. However, few studies have discussed theoretically how these changes co-evolve, over distinct stages of frontier development and for the same colonist cohort, with the composition and size of farm households. This paper, based on the revision of the extant literature, proposes a Demo-livelihoods theoretical framework that combines and synthetizes three theoretical approaches — the household and land use life cycle approach, the livelihoods and capabilities approach, and the revisited theory of multiphasic responses. The objective is to provide theoretical groundings for empirical studies that unveil how microdemographics (individual and farm household) cohort dynamics in frontier settings such as the Amazon mediate livelihoods (including land use) strategies over distinct development stages. It shows how demographic factors may be significant to define livelihoods at earlier frontier stages and release explanatory power at later stages, when market integration increases and households increasingly adopt diversified livelihoods. Furthermore, demographic dynamics at each frontier stage may be associated with distinct livelihood strategies, including mobility, land use, and deforestation, and thus define the extent and nature of settler´s welfare and food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests serve a crucial role in our fight against climate change. Secondary forests provide important potential for conservation of biodiversity and climate change mitigation. In this paper, we explore whether collective property rights in the form of indigenous territories (ITs) lead to higher rates of secondary forest growth in previously deforested areas. We exploit the timing of granting of property rights, the geographic boundaries of ITs and two different methods, regression discontinuity design and differencein-difference, to recover causal estimates. We find strong evidence that indigenous territories with secure tenure not only reduce deforestation inside their lands but also lead to higher secondary forest growth on previously deforested areas. After receiving full property rights, land inside ITs displayed higher secondary forest growth than land outside ITs, with an estimated effect of 5% using our main RDD specification, and 2.21% using our difference-in-difference research design. Furthermore, we estimate that the average age of secondary forests was 2.2 y older inside ITs with secure tenure using our main RDD specification, and 2.8 y older when using our difference-indifference research design. Together, these findings provide evidence for the role that collective property rights can play in the push to restore forest ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the main spacial transformations that happened in the relationship between the city and the river in Vitória do Xingu, state of Pará, related to the installment of the the Hydroelectric Plant of Belo Monte and it's insertion in the energetic frontier imposed to the Amazon. In methodological terms, a theorical-conceptual review and field trips were made (with photographic records and formulary applications). It is argued that through the construction of the Hydroelectric plant, significant changes happened in the urban dinamic, revealed in the requalification of the city port (its waterfront), consolidation and modernization of the services and business main area and the surge of new settlement spaces in the city's countryside, mainly the road axis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most used statistical techniques that include machine learning and data mining for predicting future outcomes with help of data that already exist is known as predictive algorithm. Predictive models are not stable, and they build assumption based on past and present actions. In the paper we are going to introduce Amazon online store and how algorithms know what we like, so they can recommend products to us by their own. One of the biggest innovations in online shopping - first introduced by Amazon - was automatic recommendation generation. The more accurate prediction algorithms are, the more online stores will sell their products. For that reason, prediction algorithms are of great significance for online stores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the narrative of vice-chief Meireles Karitiana, with the participation of chief-shaman Cizino Karitiana, who discusses the Karitiana people's origin myth, particularly in relation to the tension between God and Orá, his brother - a tension between good and evil. The paper describes what can be understood of ancestral life, and the value of connecting life and earth today, especially the forest. It highlights some aspects of the myth related particularly to consumption, domination, anthropocentricity, and the transcendent emergence of a third energy from the tension between the 'good' God and his 'bad' brother; this is related to Jungian thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bredemeyera is a neotropical genus that comprises 12 species of woody vines and sub-erect or scandent shrubs. It occurs from Mexico to Paraguay and nearly all over Brazil. In this paper, we present a complete taxonomic revision of the genus. Bredemeyera ericifolia, a new species from the Brazilian state of Piauí, is here described and illustrated. Lectotypes are designated for Bredemeyera bracteata, B. densiflora, B. densiflora var. glabra, B. floribunda var. puberula, B. huberiana, B. isabelliana, B. laurifolia var. parvifolia, B. myrtifolia, B. parviflora, Catacoma altissima, C. brevifolia, C. lucida, and Securidaca flexuosa. A [second-step] lectotype is designated for B. velutina. Here, the names Bredemeyera altissima and B. lucida are considered taxonomic synonyms of B. divaricata, whereas B. myrtifolia and B. densiflora are synonyms of B. bracteata, and finally, B. disperma is considered a synonym of B. laurifolia. We provide an identification key, descriptions, distribution maps, illustrations, and comments on the conservation status, nomenclature, and taxonomy of all species involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the historiographic production initiatives on the history of education in the Amazon, particularly studies of researchers who investigate the state of knowledge about the trajectory of education in the region. The research methodology has a bibliographic survey of books and articles, based on indicators on the history of education in the Amazon or its states, addressing the productions that refer to the period that corresponds to the first initiatives of creation of research groups in History of Education, in the 1980s, until the last twenty years, when there was an increase of studies in the Amazon. We conclude that, in spite of the important advances that have occurred, because it is a historically peripheral region in several aspects and therefore neglected in relation to the South and Southeast of Brazil, for example, it is still necessary to expand the efforts towards the dissemination of its production, which should occur from the training of new researchers in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin America is plagued by extreme wealth inequality, much of which results from sharp disparities in land ownership. In addition to limiting access of basic goods to millions of Latin Americans, concentrations in land ownership harm the common good. Extreme disparities correlate to sluggish economic growth, inefficient agricultural practices, weakened public institutions, income disparities, and sharp increases in environmental degradation. A related concern is the destruction of indigenous peoples' land in the Amazon and denial of access to land that is rightfully theirs. This paper examines how resources from Catholic Social Teaching help us reflect critically upon and respond to these injustices. It analyzes in particular how Pope Francis and the Amazonian bishops apply the tradition in markedly new ways, ways that are shaped by and directed to this diverse, abundant and unique socio-geographical region. Attention is paid not only to what Catholic Social Teaching can bring to local justice issues, but also lessons indigenous peoples can teach the broader Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the traditional knowledge on the management of stingless bee colonies and the use of honey by Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities of the department of Loreto, in the Peruvian Amazon. Semi-structured interviews and collection of voucher bees were carried out from June to August 2016 and from November to December 2017. The informants were selected through intentional non-probabilistic sampling (snowball sampling). During the study, 21 communities were visited, of which some of the community members in thirteen communities kept stingless bees. A total of 17 species of stingless bees are reported as used in the communities for either rearing or harvesting of honey from the forest with Melipona eburnea being the most common species. The way communities classify, manage, and use bees depends on how they perceive these insects, informed by knowledge processed and incorporated from other communities. In these communities, they use honey and pollen, with honey being the main product. Fourteen health conditions are treated with honey, with the most treated conditions being related to respiratory ailments, fertility, and reproduction. The study provides a basis for incorporating stingless bees into conservation and sustainable production policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of people across the world live off-grid not by choice but because they live in rural areas, have low income, and have no political clout. Delivering sustainable energy solutions to such a substantial amount of the world's population requires more than a technological fix; it requires leveraging the knowledge of underserved populations working together with a transdisciplinary team to find holistically derived solutions. Our original research has resulted in an innovative Convergence Framework integrating the fields of engineering, social sciences, and communication, and is based on working together with communities and other stakeholders to address the challenges posed by delivering clean energy solutions. In this paper, we discuss the evolution of this Framework and illustrate how this Framework is being operationalized in our on-going research project, cocreating hybrid renewable energy systems for off-grid communities in the Brazilian Amazon. The research shows how this Framework can address clean energy transitions, strengthen emerging industries at local level, and foster Global North-South scholarly collaborations. We do so by the integration of social science and engineering and by focusing on community engagement, energy justice, and governance for underserved communities. Further, this solution-driven Framework leads to the emergence of unique approaches that advance scientific knowledge, while at the same time addressing community needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing number of claims filed by Indigenous peoples against pollution caused by extractive industries makes the challenge of factualizing and measuring the damage caused in their territories necessary. In Peru, the Kukama Kukamiria people are among the most affected by the various spills from the North Peruvian Pipeline since its construction, one of the most well-known occurred in the lower Marañón River in 2014. This paper is about the efforts and limitations involved in aligning the Kukama Kukamiria's experiences with the criteria and frameworks for measuring damage and compensation amid the toxic environment and the complicated time and space of late capitalism. Based on ethnographic research and considering the judicial processes, the analysis found that compensation became a tool of dispute in which incommensurable Indigenous worlds emerged to claim for their incommensurability to exist. But in the Peruvian neoliberal and extractive context, compensation also became a technique for governing Indigenous lives and natures in a way that excludes those worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On pioneer fronts, the new spatial-temporal evolution of agriculture needs to be understood to help farmers find their way to conciliate food production and forest conservation. Analyzing farm trajectories is consequently critical for designing such futures and to assess their commitments with agroecology principles. Based on the analysis of the literature on farm trajectories and pathways we proposed a renewed analytical framework to analyze farm trajectories in pioneer fronts and support the identification of desirable strategies for the future. A systematic review adapted from the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) methodology was used. From an initial record of 246 papers, 81 were selected as eligible for the review. The articles were classified in six categories according to three criteria: i) the retrospective or prospective analysis of farm trajectories, ii) the consideration or not of the territorial scale (drawing lessons at territorial scale), iii) the use or not of modeling tools. We also explored whether off-farm factors (such as existing infrastructure at territorial scale or access to credit) and intra-farm factors (such as the organization of family work and the role of women within this organization) were considered since these factors affect farms trajectories in pioneer fronts. Results indicate that the concept of trajectory is mainly associated with retrospective analyses while the concept of pathway is mostly associated with prospective studies generally using simulation tools for the design of future scenarios. The link between trajectories and agroecological principles also has been little explored in the literature. Both retrospective and prospective studies fail to pay sufficient attention to the roles of women and family organization. Lastly, most of the methodologies studied do not fully consider the effects of off-farm territorial factors and public policies on these trajectories. We propose an analytical framework that would address these limitations. This framework is currently used in Brazilian and Colombian Amazon and will help defining sustainable farm trajectories limiting deforestation. Such a framework is needed to support farm development on pioneer fronts and broadly in territories that must deal with highly critical environmental agendas. [Display omitted] • Analyzing farm trajectories may help to identify the most sustainable sequences of farm changes that could limit deforestation on pioneer fronts • This review on fam trajectories is based on an adaptation of PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) method • Existing studies overlooked agroecological principles, the effects of territorial factors, the contributions of women and family work organizations • We propose an analytical framework that addresses the limitations found in existing studies and combine retrospective and prospective analyses • This framework should help defining sustainable trajectories limiting deforestation in pioneer fronts [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Businesses need to use sentiment analysis, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to forecast accurately whether or not consumers are satisfied with their offerings. This paper uses a deep learning model to analyze thousands of reviews of Amazon Alexa to predict customer sentiment. The proposed model can be directly applied to any company with an online presence to detect customer sentiment from their reviews automatically. This research aims to present a suitable method for analyzing the users' reviews of Amazon Echo and categorizing them into positive or negative thoughts. A dataset containing reviews of 3150 users has been used in this research work. Initially, a word cloud of positive and negative reviews was plotted, which gave a lot of insight from the text data. After that, a deep learning model using a multinomial naive Bayesian classifier was built and trained using 80% of the dataset. Then the remaining 20% of the dataset was used to test the model. The proposed model gives 93% accuracy. The proposed model has also been compared with four models used in the same domain, outperforming three. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how to generate development while preserving the environment is central to the history of the Brazilian Amazon. Many decades of top-down state interventions conceived and executed under a developmentalist framework have resulted in a socioenvironmental crisis. In response, the Sustainable Oil Palm Production Program (SPOPP) was launched in 2010. It promised to break with developmentalist visions and articulate environmental and sustainability concerns. This paper uses assemblage thinking to examine how these contrasting, often impossible-to-balance, views manifest within SPOPP implementation. We describe how non-human actors (trees, diseases, previous policies and agroecological zoning technologies) interact with human actors. However, powerful actors, in the state and beyond, continue to garner support for their developmentalist interests and thwart or depoliticize environmental and social concerns, thus limiting change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The order Odonata (Insecta) is composed of aquatic insects popularly known as dragonflies and damselflies. Members of this order are closely linked to the conservation status of their habitats; however, the Wallacean shortfall in some regions still remains high. The Volta Grande do Xingu region is known to have high endemism of some groups, such as Actinopterygii (fish), which can be applied to other groups that do not yet have their fauna known at the site, such as the order Odonata. The Wallacean shortfall and constant anthropic changes (for example, the construction of the Belo Monte Hydroelectric) have been obstacles in the preservation of these and other groups. In that regard, the main aim of this paper is to provide a checklist of Odonata (Insecta) adult species from the streams of Volta Grande do Xingu, Pará, Brazil. The collections were carried out in 19 streams in the Volta Grande do Xingu region in September 2019, corresponding to the drought period. A total of 526 specimens were collected, where two suborders, six families, 26 genera and 43 species were identified. Three species of Odonata were registered for the first time in the state of Pará: Erythrodiplax famula (Erichson in Schomburgk, 1848); Acanthagrion chacoense Calvert, 1909 and Epipleoneura lamina Williamson, 1915. These data allow us to help increase the knowledge of Odonata fauna in the streams of Volta Grande do Xingu, a region that is under intense anthropic pressure. This helps to reduce the Wallacean shortfall, with another area sampled for the state of Pará. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the themes of language rights, language choice, and language risk to consider linguistic insecurity in the Northwest Amazon (Upper Negro river) region of Brazil. Because the region is home to a large number of languages (c. two dozen), the idea of preserving this diversity is a popular theme in discourses about language in the Upper Negro river. I argue that the ideologies underlying the goal of preserving 'diversity' as a concept are not, in fact, the same ones that have sustained the presence of these languages thus far, especially as concerns the Tukanoan languages of the Uaupés basin (Jackson, J. E. 1983. The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press). Paradoxically, the reification of 'diversity' as a characteristic of the Northwest Amazonian Indigenous population has tended to promote homogenisation among groups that have historically valued differentiation from one another. In examining ideologies and practices surrounding each of the three themes of this issue, I suggest that discourses of 'diversity', applied at the local level, can create complex outcomes for the languages they are used to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The retail sector in the United States is undergoing an important transformation process, mainly in the last decade, due to the popularization of the internet and e-commerce. This paper aims to study extract the implicit perspectives for each company studied from the pricing of its shares trought the Gordon Model methodology. The results appoint, then, that the growth prospects for the e-commerce leader (Amazon) are much higher than the prospects for other companies, whether in the physical or online segment. The creation of important competitive advantages by Amazon has allowed it to grow faster than its competitors, including Ebay, is not achieving the same success as Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The definition of priority areas for conservation and integrated management actions are essential for the effective maintenance and recovery of natural populations, especially for species overexploited by humans. Amazonian chelonians are a food resource historically used by people, resulting in the decline of species populations and worsening the risk of local extinctions. In this paper, we establish priority areas and define integrated conservation actions for populations of three Amazonian chelonians most threatened by human consumption in Brazil (Podocnemis expansa, P. unifilis and P. sextuberculata). To do so, we used 15 prioritization criteria (ecological, logistical and socioeconomic) estimated with 30 years monitoring data in 15 areas by the Amazon Chelonian Program (in portugues Projeto Quelonios da Amazonia, PQA). Each criterion presented four levels of priority with scores increasing according to the relevance for conservation of chelonian populations. The sum of the scores obtained in each area of the PQA allowed a ranking and four categories of importance for conservation to be defined. We also analyzed the similarity of scores among areas of the PQA and among the prioritization criteria to evaluate the application of integrated conservation action strategies. The areas of PQA were classified as Extremely Important for Conservation (Rebio Trombetas River, Middle Xingu River, Middle Araguaia River, Upper Guaporé River), Very Highly Important for Conservation (Middle Purus River, Middle Juruá River, Crixás-Açu River Mouth, Sub-middle Tapajós River); Highly Important for Conservation (Sub-Middle Araguaia River, Amazonas River Mouth, Middle Mortes River); and Important for Conservation (Middle Guaporé River, Lower Branco River, Flechal River, Afuá River). The prioritization and similarity analyses can support the development of a national integrated plan of conservation actions to reduce the overexploitation of Amazon chelonian populations, according to the ecological, logistical and socioeconomic needs of each PQA area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although protected by the law on fixed prices for books, independent bookshops in France have struggled to maintain their market share against bookselling giants such as Amazon and the chains. In trying to do so, they have developed a rhetoric based on the singularity of the experience in physical shops, stressing a sense of intimacy akin to that associated with the domestic sphere. Their being independent – no matter how slippery the notion – has also been a key argument. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of symbolic goods, this paper aims to show that this strategy has been effective in singling out something that 'only' independent retail can provide, something that proves particularly attractive to certain categories of customers. The article draws on semi-structured interviews carried out with owners of small and medium-sized independent bookshops, together with observation during events and debates, to provide some insight into a key element of physical bookshops' resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habitat fragmentation remains a major focus of research by ecologists decades after being put forward as a threat to the integrity of ecosystems. While studies have documented myriad biotic changes in fragmented landscapes, including the local extinction of species from fragments, the demographic mechanisms underlying these extinctions are rarely known. However, many of them—especially in lowland tropical forests—are thought to be driven by one of two mechanisms: (1) reduced recruitment in fragments resulting from changes in the diversity or abundance of pollinators and seed dispersers or (2) increased rates of individual mortality in fragments due to dramatically altered abiotic conditions, especially near fragment edges. Unfortunately, there have been few tests of these potential mechanisms due to the paucity of long‐term and comprehensive demographic data collected in both forest fragments and continuous forest sites. Here we report 11 years (1998–2009) of demographic data from populations of the Amazonian understory herb Heliconia acuminata (LC Rich.) found at Brazil's Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP). The data set comprises >66,000 plant × year records of 8586 plants, including 3464 seedlings established after the first census. Seven populations were in experimentally isolated fragments (one in each of four 1‐ha fragments and one in each of three 10‐ha fragments), with the remaining six populations in continuous forest. Each population was in a 50 × 100 m permanent plot, with the distance between plots ranging from 500 m to 60 km. The plants in each plot were censused annually, at which time we recorded, identified, marked, and measured new seedlings, identified any previously marked plants that died, and recorded the size of surviving individuals. Each plot was also surveyed four to five times during the flowering season to identify reproductive plants and record the number of inflorescences each produced. These data have been used to investigate topics ranging from the way fragmentation‐related reductions in germination influence population dynamics to statistical methods for analyzing reproductive rates. This breadth of prior use reflects the value of these data to future researchers. In addition to analyses of plant responses to habitat fragmentation, these data can be used to address fundamental questions in plant demography and the evolutionary ecology of tropical plants and to develop and test demographic models and tools. Though we welcome opportunities to collaborate with interested users, there are no restrictions on the use of this data set. However, we do request that those using the data for teaching or research purposes inform us of how they are doing so and cite this paper and the data archive when appropriate. Any publication using the data must also include a BDFFP Technical Series Number in the Acknowledgments. Authors can request this series number upon the acceptance of their article by contacting the BDFFP's Scientific Coordinator or E. M. Bruna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is evidence that suggests that both the creation of Protected Areas (PAs) and indigenous Reserves (IRs) has helped to reduce deforestation. Nevertheless, there are some overlapping zones between these institutions in the Colombian Amazon that have not been studied. Are these overlaps affecting the deforestation in the IRs? How are the indigenous communities responding to these overlaps? In this paper I estimate the impacts of these overlaps on the deforestation inside the IRs using a Propensity Score Matching (PSM) methodology. I use important determinants of the location of PAs and deforestation to create a valid counterfactual within the IRs. My results suggest that the overlap significantly reduces the deforestation, but that there is a differential effect depending on the IR's size. These results suggest that the extra legal restriction imposed by the central government favor the territorial control inside the IRs. This paper provides a starting point to analyze the current relationship between the central government, the indigenous communities and how it affects deforestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artisanal and small‐scale gold mining (ASGM) is the primary global source of anthropogenic mercury (Hg) emissions and a large source of landscape change. ASGM occurs throughout the world, including in the Peruvian Amazon. This data set contains measurements of surface water, precipitation, throughfall, leaves, sediment, soil, and air samples from across the Madre de Dios region of Peru, in locations near and remote from ASGM. These data were collected to determine the fate and transport of Hg across the landscape. Samples were collected in 2018 and 2019. Data predominantly included total Hg and methyl Hg concentrations in surface water, precipitation, throughfall, leaves, sediment, soil, and air. Additional water and soil parameters were also measured to better characterize their chemistry. There are no copyright restrictions; please cite this data paper when the data are used in publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main goals of modern sustainability science is to generate knowledge that societies can use to move toward more sustainable development pathways; however, there are few quantitative methods available to assess such pathways. This paper proposes a new index (the Sustainable Development Pathway Index, SDPI) that uses the Euclidean norm to measure the distance between the ideal and the actual development pathways of any geopolitical unit in a determined time frame. We test the new index by evaluating the development pathways of the 517 municipalities of the Brazilian Amazon, one of the world's last economic frontiers, from 1991 to 2010, by simultaneously analyzing indicators of ecological and socioeconomic infrastructures. We show that the region can be described as a mosaic of geopolitical units following distinct development pathways in response to the economic activities and extensive land transformations advancing from the region's southern and eastern borders to its center. This general pattern aligns well with the region's recent history. We outline a research agenda for using the SDPI to document the broad patterns of development pathways and the processes that make them sustainable or unsustainable. • The Sustainable Development Pathway Index (SDPI) is proposed. • SDPI measures the sustainability of place-based development pathways. • The Brazilian Amazon is used to test the new index. • SDPI is sensitive to local conditions and can be applied worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In the Amazon, Agricultural fires impair respiratory health but are also needed for subsistence agriculture. • Exogenous variation of wind direction was employed as source for identifying the effect of fire on hospitalizations. • One extra standard deviation on fires increased elderly hospitalization due to asthma in 4% of the bed-days generally demanded. • A trade-off between avoided hospitalizations and nutrition of fire-dependent subsistence farmers was unveiled. • Targeting of non-subsistence fires is advised, what could avoid 28 hospital-days per year. Developing countries by relying on agricultural fires trade respiratory health for cheaper land preparation and greater food security of subsistence farmers. In the Brazilian Amazon, thousands of kilometres of vegetation are annually burned, releasing pollutants that impact the health of 24 million inhabitants. The paper seeks to fill two crucial informational gaps for policy planning, namely, the size of the impact on the most pollution-susceptible groups, i.e., children and the elderly, and the priority locations for health-oriented intervention on fires. A municipal-monthly panel covering ten years of the Amazonian territory was analysed by relying on exogenous and high-resolution wind direction variation to identify the effect of fires on pollution and hospitalizations. This is an unparalleled effort for applying to a large geographical area spanning five million km2 a highly refined identification strategy relying on hourly gridded wind and fire data. As the result, one extra standard deviation of "upwind" fires was estimated to increase asthma-related hospitalization of the elderly in 0.03 days/month, that is, 4 % of the bed-days commonly demanded by such kind of hospitalization, an effect whose size decayed with the distance between fires and hospitals. A policy assessment uncovered the trade-off between respiratory health of the elderly and nutritional health of fire-dependent subsistence farmers, presenting a priority map for tackling the issue with municipal-level interventions. The targeting of non-subsistence fires is advised, what could avoid 28 days of hospitalization per year. It is thus demonstrated that the trade-offs inherent to agricultural fires could be better balanced by evidence-based targeting of fire prevention policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Stakeholders highlighted economic benefits, environmental harms, and social problems, along with infrastructure complications. • Stakeholders indicated a broader array of impacts of infrastructure than those featured in previous research. • Stakeholders highlighted various forms of crime, including violent crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking as infrastructure impacts. • Stakeholders reported numerous economic, environmental and social proposals to improve planning and governance of infrastructure. There is a large research literature on the impacts of roads and other infrastructure, which highlights the economic benefits, environmental harms and social problems. Most previous research on infrastructure impacts adopts a top-down approach, such as via the use of governmental or remotely-sensed data. This paper argues that a bottom-up approach that features stakeholder perspectives offers complementary advantages to understanding infrastructure impacts that can support improved planning and governance. We conducted stakeholder workshops about impacts of the Interoceanic Highway in the tri-national "MAP" frontier of the southwestern Amazon. The findings confirm previous research in several respects, but also indicate several contrasts. The range of impacts is much broader than topics featured in previous research, and some of the most commonly reported problems, such as diverse forms of crime, have been rarely studied as infrastructure impacts. We conclude by discussing the implications, in terms of criminological research on infrastructure impacts, synergies among diverse impacts of infrastructure, and improved planning of infrastructure for better governance of impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development has become a major topic as the impacts of human actions on the environment have increasingly dramatic consequences. This article describes and analyses a case of organizing for sustainable development that involved multiple social actors working in a participatory way. The research focuses on a project that aimed to define guidelines for carrying out large-scale engineering and construction ventures in the Amazon. It was conducted by a Brazilian research center and an international development agency. The field research included interviews with project leaders, extensive document analysis and nonparticipant observation. As a theoretical lens, we used the concept of territorial governance, from which we created propositions on how interventions should work. Based on these propositions and additional literature on social-ecological systems, an evaluation of the project is presented. We found the elements that were vital to the short-term success of the project, i.e., the skills of the change agents, the reputation of their organizations, and the social technology employed. We also found that less attention to public policies might weaken its long-term prospects. This work advances the knowledge on alternative modes of organizing for sustainability. Additionally, the paper emphasizes the concept of territorial governance, which offers opportunities for engaged scholars interested in tackling grand challenges. • In the Amazon the tension between conservation and development manifests in full. • Large-scale projects in the Amazon fail to generate benefits for the populations. • The use of guidelines may enhance the chance of success for sustainable projects. • The concept of territorial governance may guide sustainable development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • First description of nutritional facts of Amazonian blueberries. • Determination of the antioxidant and anti-glycative potentials. • Quantitative analysis of anthocyanins and other phenolic compounds. • First study with Clidemia capitellata , C. pustulata and Tococa bullifera. Berries come from hundreds of different species of plants spread around the world. Blackberries, blueberries and raspberries, for instance, are popular berries that have attracted attention for providing several benefits to human health. Wild berries from the Melastomataceae family are commonly encountered in the Amazon, although these small blue fruits are poorly consumed. Although domesticated fruits give better monetary profits, the consumption of wild fruits is a desirable option to afford income and/or food to communities at the same time as keep the Amazon region preserved. Aiming the divulgation of the nutritional potential of these plants, this paper describes the study of six species of Amazonian blueberries, five of them from the Clidemia genus and one from the Tococa genus, in regard to their nutritional and chemical composition and antioxidant activity (AA). The levels of moisture, ash, protein, lipids, carbohydrates, and the total caloric values obtained for the Amazonian blueberries were comparable to other common edible berries. Although the six species are similar in terms of nutritional composition, their anthocyanin profiles and contents are quite peculiar. Two non-methylated anthocyanins, cyanidin and delphinidin, which bound to a variable number of sugars, characterized the berries of the genera Clidemia and Tococa. Clidemia japurensis , Clidemia hirta and Tococa bullifera were rich in tri-glycosylated anthocyanins, although differences are notable between them. Clidemia pustulata and Clidemia capitellata were characterized by the prevalence of mono-glycosylated anthocyanins, and Clidemia rubra showed a unique profile with mono- and di-glycosylated homologous as the main anthocyanins. In addition to their different chemical profiles, the concentrations of anthocyanins and other phenolic compounds varied a lot among the six species studied. The species C. rubra had the highest total concentration of phenolic acids and flavonoids. Therefore, this study showed that the blueberries analyzed have potential to be better explored, which we suggest doing in a sustainable way, aiming at the preservation of the Amazon's biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 disproportionally affect vulnerable groups in society. This paper assesses responses to, and impacts of, the pandemic among mobile migrant populations who work in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) in Suriname and French Guiana. These populations are characterized by poverty, informal or illegal status, and limited access to health care and information. Field research in Suriname (November 2020–January 2021) and French Guiana (January, May, June 2021) included qualitative interviews, informal conversations and observations, and a quantitative survey with 361 men and women in ASGM communities. Contrary to reports from the ASGM sector elsewhere, interviewed inhabitants of ASGM areas in Suriname and French Guiana showed little concern about COVID-19. Respondents reported feeling safer in the forest where they work than in the urban areas or in their home country. Trust in home remedies and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals further reduced anxiety about the pandemic. Three-quarters of survey respondents reported that the COVID-19 pandemic had not affected their work or income at all. The researchers conclude that in these remote Amazon communities, responses to COVID-19 mirror attitudes and behavior vis-à-vis malaria and other health risks: self-medicate, ignore, and pray. Living on the margins of society mitigates the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, as containment measures are not applied to these socially invisible populations. Whereas the urban poor are severely hit by the pandemic, this hidden population benefits from high gold prices, an outdoors lifestyle, and traditional resourcefulness in dealing with a life full of risks. • Regular exposure to risk drives health risk behavior. • Self-medication against COVID-19 popular among Amazonian mobile migrant populations. • COVID-19 containment measures scarcely affect socially invisible rural populations. • In ASGM communities, approach to COVID-19 parallels approach to malaria. • Small-scale gold mining provides resilience during global health and economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Air pollution in the Brazilian Amazon leads to increases in hospitalization rates. • Adverse effects are concentrated in respiratory conditions. • Effects are higher among children and the elderly. • Effects increase non-linearly with air pollution levels. • There are negative externalities related to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. In this paper we assess the effects of fire-related air pollution on population health in the Brazilian Amazon. Our empirical strategy is based on a municipality-by-month fixed effects model, coupled with an instrumental variables approach that explores wind direction and air pollution in surrounding areas in order to exogenously shift exposure to air pollution at the locality. We find that exposure to air pollution, measured by PM2.5 concentration levels, is robustly associated with an increase in hospital admissions for respiratory conditions. The effects are higher among children and the elderly, and increase non-linearly with pollution levels. Our benchmark estimates indicate that an increase of one standard deviation in PM2.5 is related to an increase of 1.5% of the monthly hospitalization rate for respiratory conditions. The latter estimate reaches 14% if monthly average PM2.5 crosses thresholds as high as 75 μ g/m3. We do not observe significant effects on hospitalization rates related to other health conditions nor on mortality rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosyndemics refer to disease interactions that result from environmental changes commonly caused by humans. In this paper, we push scholarship on ecosyndemics into new territory by using the ecosyndemic framework to compare two case studies—the Southern Interoceanic highway in Peru and the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Brazil—to assess the likelihood of socio-environmental factors interacting and leading to ill health in a syndemic fashion. Assessing these two case studies using an ecosyndemic perspective, we find that the construction of dams and highways in tropical forests create the conditions for increases in vector-borne illnesses, surges in sex work and sexually-transmitted infections, and increased psychological stress resulting from violence, delinquency, and the erosion of social cohesion. We suggest that these processes could interact synergistically to increase an individual's immune burden and a population's overall morbidity. However, we find differences in the impacts of the Interoceanic highway and the Belo Monte dam on food, water, and cultural systems, and observed that community and corporate-level actions may bolster health in the face of rapid socio-ecological change. Looking at the case studies together, a complex picture of vulnerability and resilience, risk and opportunity, complicates straight-forward predictions of ecosyndemic interactions resulting from these development projects but highlights the role that the ecosyndemic concept can play in informing health impact assessments and future research. We conclude by proposing a conceptual model of the potential interactions between psychological stress, vector-borne illnesses, and sexaully-transmitted infections and suggest that future investigations of synergistic interactions among these factors draw from the biological, social, and ecological sciences. • Ecosyndemics are disease interactions ignited by eco-social changes. • We compared two Amazonian mega-development projects using an ecosyndemic framing. • Projects were Belo Monte dam in Brazil and the Interoceanic highway in Peru. • Potential synergism among stress, vector-borne and sexually-transmitted infections. • Researchers should use interdisciplinary methods to further examine dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Four satellite vegetation data were compared over Amazon rainforest. • We observed a great spatial difference in dry season over Amazon. • A general increase in vegetation during dry season over Amazon rainforest. • Great spatial differences in changes during dry season were found among vegetation product. There has been a debate regarding whether the Amazon rainforest is greening during the dry season. This is partially because of the great uncertainty associated with the ability of different vegetation indices to accurately assess tropical vegetation status. This paper, revisit this issue by comprehensively examining the seasonal variations in vegetation recorded in various satellite-based vegetation datasets, namely, the leaf area index (LAI), contiguous solar-induced fluorescence (CSIF), enhanced vegetation index (EVI), and vegetation optical depth (VOD). All four of these vegetation datasets show an increase in vegetation during the dry season in most parts of the Amazon; however, the vegetation changes are not only spatially variable, but also differ among the datasets. This may be attributable in part to the different physical characteristics captured by each of the datasets. For example, the seasonal maximum value occurs first in the LAI, followed by the CSIF, EVI, and VOD, in that order. The seasonal cycle of the LAI agrees reasonably well with in-situ observations of leaf flush and leaf fall. As new leaf production offsets senescence and abscission, the dry-season vegetation increases in most parts of the Amazon rainforest. Partial correlation analysis was used to further investigate the potential climatic cues (i.e., precipitation, temperature and radiation) associated with the seasonal changes recorded in the vegetation data. We found that precipitation and radiation were the dominant potential cues for seasonal VOD (48%) and LAI (59%) changes, respectively. However, CSIF appears to be associated more closely with temperature and precipitation, with significant correlations observed across ∼x223C 37% of the Amazon rainforest area for both with CSIF. Finally, variations in the EVI showed similar sensitivity to all three climatic variables considered. The findings presented here will greatly improve our understanding of vegetation dynamics and the carbon cycle in the Amazon rainforest ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the geomorphic classification and bathymetry (at 100 m) of 12 major floodplains along a 900 km reach of the middle-lower Amazon River (Manaus – Monte Alegre; total floodplain area of 5164 km2), based on the inundation frequency (IF) derived from 36 yr of Landsat data. Using a mathematical relationship between IF and surveyed depth at the Curuai floodplain in June 2004, this IF-depth model is applied across floodplains of the middle-lower Amazon to estimate bathymetry. The applicability of the model is justified by similar grain size distribution (dominantly silt and clay) of sediment in the surface water of floodplain lakes (the main materials constructing the floodplains), as well as a hydrogeomorphic classification of this reach: seven floodplains lying on the alluvial plain dominated by the Amazon-flood pulse (Type I), three floodplains incised in valleys dominated by sediment-poor upland tributaries (Type II) and two floodplains of mixed types. This classification is used to distinguish the sensitivity of floodplains to the IF-depth model, where Type I floodplains of higher sensitivity provide a more accurate depth estimation. The bathymetry for both types is validated with field survey data across eight floodplains (covering over 200 km survey distance) collected in June – July 2016 and adjusted by the difference between mean June 2004 and June/July 2016 water level. Correlation coefficients of 0.87 (Type I) and 0.94 (Type II) indicate a strong relationship between estimated and measured depth for both floodplain types, while the root mean square error of 1.03 m (Type I) and 1.02 m (Type II) suggest that bathymetry is estimated to around 1 m error, equivalent to 10.9% and 10.8% of maximum water level variability, respectively. We offer the first field-validated and complete bathymetry map for the middle-lower Amazon River with accuracy that can be used to evaluate the role of floodplains in influencing biodiversity, sedimentation, flood control and biogeochemical cycling. • First field-validated floodplain bathymetry of the middle lower Amazon River • Depth estimation is based on inundation frequency and field survey data. • Floodplain classification based on morphology, geology and flooding dynamics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land cover mapping over large areas is essential to address a wide spectrum of socio-environmental challenges. For this reason, many global or regional land cover products are regularly released to the scientific community. Yet, the remote sensing community has not fully addressed the challenge to extract useful information from vast volumes of satellite data. Especially, major limitations concern the use of inadequate classification schemes and "black box" methods that may not match with end-users conceptualization of geographic features. In this paper, we introduce a knowledge-driven methodological approach to automatically process Sentinel-2 time series in order to produce pre-classifications that can be adapted by end-users to match their requirements. The approach relies on a conceptual framework inspired from ontologies of scientific observation and geographic information to describe the representation of geographic entities in remote sensing images. The implementation consists in a three-stage classification system including an initial stage, a dichotomous stage and a modular stage. At each stage, the system firstly relies on natural language semantic descriptions of time series of spectral signatures before assigning labels of land cover classes. The implementation was tested on 75 time series of Sentinel-2 images (i.e. 2069 images) in the Southern Brazilian Amazon to map natural vegetation and water bodies as required by a local end-user, i.e. a non-governmental organization. The results confirmed the potential of the method to accurately detect water bodies (F-score = 0.874 for bodies larger than 10 m) and map natural vegetation (max F-score = 0.875), yet emphasizing the spatial heterogeneity of accuracy results. In addition, it proved to be efficient to provide rapid estimates of degraded riparian forests at watershed level (R 2 = 0.871). Finally, we discuss potential improvements both in the system's implementation, e.g. considering additional characteristics, and in the conceptual framework, e.g. moving from pixel- to object-based image analysis and evolving towards a hybrid system combining data- and knowledge-driven approaches. • End-user requirements are rarely taken into account in large scale land cover maps. • We developed a knowlegde-driven approach to automatically map large areas. • We introduced an ontology-based conceptual framework. • We implemented a system to classify Sentinel 2 times series in the Brazilian Amazon. • The system was efficient to map vegetation gradients and small water bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]