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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]

Summary: Gazetting and maintaining protected areas (PAs) are political processes and, as such, depend on wider society's support in order to achieve their aims. In this paper, we evaluated the influence of gender, education, age, income, place of origin and place of residence on public support for PAs in the Brazilian state of Amapá, a new tropical forest frontier. We gathered 615 complete interviews with adults living in both rural and urban settings. We found that most (90.5%) of the participants support PAs and that this attitude is more likely to exist among urban than rural participants. We found that gender, education, age, income and place of origin did not influence support for PAs. Biodiversity conservation is the most common reason why PAs receive public support. In contrast, participants who do not favour PAs see them as providing no benefit to people. We suggest that support by local political leaders from dominant and rival political parties for conservation helps to promote acceptance of PAs by stakeholders. However, relatively low support for PAs among rural participants could indicate that the expectations of these populations regarding the social benefits associated with this conservation policy have yet to be fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use change (LUC) is a main cause of global environmental change, and is an important activity to be studied. Our research aims to examine the current state of evidence on the link between LUC and human health in the Amazon region. We conducted a scoping review of literature in two research databases, resulting in 14 papers for analysis. Our analysis demonstrated a lack of clear definitions for LUC, a wide variety of negative health effects from LUC, the lack of qualitative articles, a lack of studies exploring the potential positive health effects of LUC, and the predominance of studies coming from the Brazilian Amazon. Our study validated the prevailing idea that LUC can lead to negative health consequences, if not managed properly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The research combines economic, historical and anthropological data on the role of forests in local livelihoods in three South American countries. • Results showed the strong economic importance of forests to Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, despite different contexts and histories. • Non-economic values of forests were also remarkably strong among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples inhabiting forests for varied time scales. • The utilitarian notion behind nature valuation is not sufficient to comprehensively understand how local populations benefit from forests. • Development policies should support and leverage non-economic forest values and cosmologies, and provide sustainable economic alternatives. Research on the contribution of forests to local livelihoods has so far had a strong focus on quantifying the monetary value of forest-derived products and services. In this paper, we move beyond monetary valuation and integrate the less tangible and sometimes culturally complex dimensions through which forests support local livelihoods. We look at four local contexts in the Brazilian, Bolivian and Ecuadorian Amazon, which differ markedly in terms of their biophysical, sociocultural and geopolitical settings. Combining economic and anthropological data, we used quantitative and qualitative methods, and measures of the ecological impacts of local forest uses. Quantitative analyses drew on datasets from 48 communities, and 510 households, while the qualitative analyses relied on semi-structured interviews with 78 families in 22 communities. Forest-based livelihoods exhibited complex portfolios, diversified production systems, seasonal variation of activities, and different specialization strategies. Beyond a source of subsistence and cash incomes, forests were locally valued by people across all sites in terms of identities, worldviews, territorial attachment, governance, and conservation. Populations with a longer history of interactions with the environment displayed more complex forest-related cultural systems, but even among people who had migrated into the forest in a more recent historical period, forest-based self-cultural identification was evident. At all sites, forests were unanimously recognized as critical to people's health and wellbeing, despite substantial differences in local histories, policy and market environments. The findings underscore the persistent importance of non-economic values of forests as both Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups constantly adapt their forest and land use practices based on transcultural exchange and changing conditions. A focus on economic value as the rationale for forest conservation disregards the striking resilience of cultural values in promoting forest conservation and use by diverse local and Indigenous communities, especially when supported by favorable policies and markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim with this paper is to present a novel approach for developing story lines and scenarios by combining qualitative knowledge and quantitative data from different disciplines and discussing the results with relevant decision makers. This research strategy offers a solid foundation for perspectives into the future. The "laboratory" is the Brazilian Amazon, one of the hotspots of land-use change where local and global interests both collide and converge: local livelihoods are affected by regional and global climate change and by the loss of biodiversity caused by local and global economic interests in agro-industrial land use; such use contributes, in turn, to climate change. After decades of diverse policy interventions the question arises: What can we learn from past trajectories for a more sustainable development in the future? To answer this question, we combined qualitative story lines for the region, reviewed by local experts, with quantitative land-use scenarios, to study their regional and local manifestations in space. These results were then discussed again with local and national experts. Our findings suggest that in-depth knowledge of the diverging perspectives at a very local level is a fundamental prerequisite for downscaling global scenarios and upscaling local approaches to sustainable land-use management and thus, to producing communicable and applicable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The present paper considers a sometimes contentious process of land reform presently occurring in Brazil. This process, referred to in the paper as Direct Action Land Reform (DALR), involves organizations such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) and more spontaneous actions of individuals desiring a piece of land for their own. Results of a survey covering 751 households engaged in such land reform actions in the Brazilian Amazon are presented, in order to describe participants and land reform processes. Evidently, social movement organizations provide for a modest degree of wealth accumulation, a welfare improvement that must be set against potential environmental costs. The paper concludes by calling attention to the challenge DALR may ultimately pose to the Brazilian state. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Amazon River, its huge basin, and the changes in biological processes that are rapidly occurring in this region are unquestionably of global significance. Hence, Global Change Biology is delighted to host a special thematic issue devoted to the Large-scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazônia (LBA), which is a multinational, interdisciplinary research program led by Brazil. The goal of LBA is no less modest than its subject: to understand how Amazônia functions as a regional entity in the Earth system and how these functions are changing as a result of ongoing changes in land use. This compilation of 26 papers resulting from LBA-related research covers a broad range of topics: forest stocks of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N); fluxes of greenhouse gases and volatile organic compounds from vegetation, soils and wetlands; mapping and modeling land-use change, fire risk, and soil properties; measuring changes caused by logging, pasturing and cultivating; and new research approaches in meteorology to estimate nocturnal fluxes of C from forests and pastures. Some important new synthesis can be derived from these and other studies. The aboveground biomass of intact Amazonian forests appears to be a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), while the wetlands and soils are a net source of atmospheric methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), respectively. Land-use change has, so far, had only a minor effect on basin-wide emissions of CH4 and N2O, but the net effect of deforestation and reforestation appears to be a significant net release of CO2 to the atmosphere. The sum of the 100-year global warming potentials (GWP) of these annual sources and sinks of CH4, N2O, and CO2 indicate that the Amazonian forest-river system currently may be nearly balanced in terms of the net GWP of these biogenic atmospheric gases. Of course, large uncertainties remain for these estimates, but the papers published here demonstrate tremendous progress, and also large remaining hurdles, in narrowing these uncertainties in our understanding of how Amazônia functions as a regional entity in the Earth system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas anchor the ecological infrastructure that societies need for long-term prosperity and provide benefits to local, national, and global stakeholders. However, these areas continue to go unfunded. In this paper, we have provided the first estimate of the return on investment for nine large protected areas that compose the core of the ecological infrastructure of the State of Amapá, which is located in a new forest frontier in Brazilian Amazonia. These nine protected areas will require US $147.2 million over five years in order to be established and then US $32.7 million in annual recurrent costs. If implemented, these nine protected areas have the potential to contribute at least US $362.4 million per year in benefits (timber, non-timber forest products, nature-based tourism, fisheries, and carbon) to the local economy. The return on investment (ROI) of these protected areas will be 1.6% during the first five years and 10% thereafter; however, ROI could reach 45.8% or more if option and non-use values are also included as benefits. Although the costs of establishing the protected area system in Amapá are higher (US $3.2–3.5 ha − 1 y − 1 ) than the costs reported in other tropical forest regions (US $0.2–0.4 ha − 1 y − 1 ), the investments required are within the reach of both state and national governments. Our study shows that if fully implemented, protected areas can become engines for socio-economic upliftment, making the conservation-centered development model a feasible option for most of the world's new forest frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often argued that various forms of illegality persist in the Brazilian Amazon because of weak frontier governance. However, very little is understood about how this governance can be strengthened in the context of social and spatial change in a way that will counter illegality. Drawing on the concept of heterotopias, as discussed by Michel Foucault, and the life history of an illegal logger in an agrarian reform settlement project in the state of Pará, this paper approaches frontier governance by conceptualising the 'settlement heterotopia' as a real, lived-in place in which the space that makes up various state and nonstate actors' sites of action interact and continually rearrange power relations. This rearrangement process may or may not work to legitimise illegality and, therefore, strengthening frontier governance involves a process by which collaborative power relations emerge and residents decide to work with the state instead of alongside illegality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International boundaries in the lowland Amazon forest were historically drawn according to the scramble for natural resources. This paper uses a case study from the Peruvian and Brazilian border and the Ucayali and Jurua watersheds to understand the political ecology of a border process from contact to 2004. Results demonstrate how global resource demand and ecological gradients drove boundary formation and the relocation of indigenous labor to the borderlands. Forgotten in the forest after the fall of rubber prices, the borderland Ashaninka emerged to challenge loggers incited by the global demand for high grade timber. The transboundary impacts of this resource boom highlight discrepancies between the Brazilian and Peruvian Ashaninka's ability to mobilize power. A transboundary political ecology framework is necessary to grasp the heterogeneity and dynamism of natural resource management along boundaries and borderlands forged and tempered by historical resource booms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Brazilian production of bentonite is approximately 300,000t/year, with more than 88% of this production concentrated in small deposits located in the Paraíba state (northeast Brazil), which consequently are becoming exhausted. The objective of this paper is to present a new occurrence of bentonite from the eastern Amazon in northern Brazil, here referred to as Balsas bentonite. A selected sample of the material was characterized by XRD, TG/DTA, ICP-OES, FTIR, SEM-EDS, N2 adsorption/desorption at 77K and CEC. The main constituent of the bulk sample is montmorillonite. Kaolinite is completely absent, in contrast to some bentonites found in the famous Paraíba state. The results obtained from the mineralogical and chemical characterization confirm that this material, in comparison to some reference bentonites from the Clay Mineral Society Source Clays, has promise as an engineering material, indicating its possible use in various research and industrial applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the interactions between state-led land reform, agrarian structures, and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Land reform tends to promote land redistribution through regularization of smallholder land invasions of large-scale landholdings, and by redistribution of public lands to smallholders in existing colonization frontiers. The implications of state-led land reform on deforestation are heterogeneous. I argue that impacts of agrarian reform are strongly related to the pre-existing social and economic configuration of the frontiers where it takes place. While it leads to lower rates of deforestation in landscapes dominated by smallholders with diversified land use, its impact on forest conversion is higher in landscapes where extensive land use, mainly prompted by large-scale cattle ranching, tends to dominate. I provide an assessment for the whole Brazilian Amazon, and examine two research sites in the state of Pará, namely Uruará and Redenção. The study is based on informant interviews, secondary information, agricultural census data, and remote sensing data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Selective logging is a dominant form of land use in the Amazon basin and throughout the humid tropics, yet little is known about the spatial variability of forest canopy gap formation and closure following timber harvests. We established chronosequences of large-area (14–158 ha) selective logging sites spanning a 3.5-year period of forest regeneration and two distinct harvest methods: conventional logging (CL) and reduced-impact logging (RIL). Our goals were to: (1) determine the spatial characteristics of canopy gap fraction immediately following selective logging in the eastern Amazon; (2) determine the degree and rate of canopy closure in early years following harvest among the major landscape features associated with logging – tree falls, roads, skid trails and log decks; and (3) quantify spatial and temporal differences in canopy opening and closure in high- and low-damage harvests (CL vs. RIL). Across a wide range of harvest intensities (2.6–6.4 felled trees ha−1), the majority of ground damage occurred as skid trails (4–12%), whereas log decks and roads were only a small contributor to the total ground damage (<2%). Despite similar timber harvest intensities, CL resulted in more ground damage than RIL. Neither the number of log decks nor their individual or total area was correlated with the number of trees removed or intensity of tree harvesting (trees ha−1). The area of skids was well correlated with the ground area damaged (m2) per tree felled. In recently logged forest (0.5 years postharvest), gap fractions were highest in log decks (mean RIL=0.83, CL=0.99) and lowest in tree-fall areas (RIL: 0.26, CL: 0.41). However, the small surface area of log decks made their contribution to the total area-integrated forest gap fraction minor. In contrast, tree falls accounted for more than two-thirds of the area disturbed, but the canopy gaps associated with felled trees were much smaller than for log decks, roads and skids. Canopy openings decreased in size with distance from each felled tree crown. At 0.5 years postharvest, the area initially affected by the felling of each tree was approximately 100 m in radius for CL and 50 m for RIL. Initial decreases in gap fraction during the first 1.5 years of regrowth diminished in subsequent years. Throughout the 3.5-year period of forest recovery, tree-fall gap fractions remained higher in CL than in RIL treatments, but canopy gap closure rates were higher in CL than in RIL areas. During the observed recovery period, the canopy gap area affected by harvesting decreased in radius around each felled tree from 100 to 40 m in CL, and from 50 to 10 m in RIL. The results suggest that the full spatial and temporal dynamics of canopy gap fraction must be understood and monitored to predict the effects of selective logging on regional energy balance and climate regimes, biogeochemical processes including carbon cycling, and plant and faunal population dynamics. This paper also shows that remote sensing of log decks alone will not provide an accurate assessment of total forest area impacted by selective logging, nor will it be closely correlated to damage levels and canopy gap closure rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Terra Legal had no overall impact on deforestation as of 2012. • Deforestation levels increased following Terra Legal in highly registered counties. • Spatial spillovers from Terra Legal were minimal in the short term. • Temporary crop cultivation decreased with greater registered area. • Investment loans increased in counties with more area registered by small and medium farms. This paper estimates the early impacts of Terra Legal , a large property rights reform, on deforestation and farming in the Brazilian Amazon. Twelve and a half million hectares, more than 2.5% of the Brazilian Amazon, have been registered under this program. The establishment of property rights may increase a farmer's incentive to invest in his land and expand his farm due to a lower risk of expropriation. On the other hand, the enforcement of conservation requirements may be easier when farmers have legal titles to their land. We use county level data from 2007 to 2012 on farm registrations, deforestation, crop choice and bovine management to test the impact of the Terra Legal land reform. While we find no overall impact of the program on deforestation during the period in our sample, we do show that there is substantial heterogeneity in impacts across counties. Counties with the largest area registered do have an increase in the level of area deforested, but they also have a decrease in the rate of deforestation. We investigate the extent to which changes in deforestation are related to the amount of registration that occurs among small, medium and large farms, and find limited support for less deforestation among counties with more area registered by small farms; more area registered by large farms is associated with a higher level of deforestation, but a decreased deforestation rate. Our results suggest that land tenure reform can create incentives to decelerate deforestation. Farm size has a strong impact on the farm management changes generated by improved property rights; coupling land tenure reforms with incentives to intensify production rather than expand could lead to reduced deforestation, particularly among small farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]