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Organic carbon performs essential functions in soils, which act as sources or sinks of atmospheric organic carbon. Agricultural management affects the carbon cycle in the soil, with effects on climate change. One of the crops most vulnerable to climate change is coffee. Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer, with a predominance of management under a conventional system, with sloping terrain and the absence of conservationist practices. The absence of conservationist practices increases in soil loss rates due to water management and carbon emissions, as well as a reduction in coffee production. This paper intended to estimate soil and organic carbon losses by RUSLE in coffee farms in southern Minas Gerais, south-eastern Brazil. Data were obtained from fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and cartographic products. The results indicated, exclusively for coffee crops, soil and carbon losses between 7 and 32 Mg ha−1 year−1 and 87 and 460kg ha−1 year−1, respectively. However, the highest soil losses occurred on sloping terrains with eucalyptus plantations located downhill, and the lowest losses occurred on flat land with native forests. Organic carbon losses were linked directly to soil losses, as a result from the land practices, slope and agricultural management adopted. These results can be used for the planning and priority definition of areas needing conservationist practices, such as green manuring, planting in contour and maintaining of vegetation between coffee rows, which are already used in some sites of the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Located in the Brazilian Amazon biome, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, Acre state, is an important area for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the region. Despite its importance, it faces challenges such as illegal deforestation, mining, and forest fires, which increase water erosion processes and generate environmental and socioeconomic negative impacts. The need to understand these impacts motivate this research, with the objective of evaluating the influence of forest fires on water erosion and quantify soil losses at this site. For this purpose, we employed the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), utilizing parameters obtained from scientific literature and remote sensing data, such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), enabling a temporal analysis of vegetation cover. Our results indicate low variations in average soil loss rates, ranging from 3.00 to 3.74 Mg ha-1 yr-1 from 2019 to 2021. In 2021, an increase in soil loss rates was observed due to a higher incidence of forest fires, especially in pasture areas. It is concluded that the preservation and adequate management of vegetation cover are essential for the protection of natural resources. The need to adopt and develop conservation and sustainable management strategies through public policy should contribute to the mitigation of environmental impacts. Furthermore, the results obtained can highlight the importance of environmental conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Floods are the main natural disasters in Brazil, causing loss of life and socioeconomic damage. This work proposes a model for the remote detection of areas that are naturally flood-prone due to the morphometric characteristics of their relief and drainage networks in the Alto Sapucaí River in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The morphometric parameters used were the drainage density, river density, relief ratio, roughness index, maintenance coefficient, form factor and stream surface length. The risk areas had a compactness coefficient of 0.75 and a form factor of 0.56, and both were considered a high risk for floods. The obtained results allowed the identification of a significant predictive equation that suggested a cutoff value of 3.82 for the discriminant function; areas with values under this cutoff were considered naturally more vulnerable to floods occurrences. These areas were corroborated with the emergency maps of the municipalities. The map obtained by the proposed model was compared with the Civil Defense map, and its accuracy, according to the Kappa coefficient, was 0.83, indicating strong similarity between the two maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Water erosion is a natural geological process that is common in tropical regions. It is important to monitor it to contain its physical, environmental, and socio-economic impacts. In the Espírito Santo state, Brazil, much of the land is used for agriculture and studies related to water erosion are scarce. The spatial modeling of water erosion is useful for proposing mitigating measures because combining it with data from geographic information systems can identify the areas most prone to soil loss. The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation - RUSLE, is a model that requires little input data and is easy to use, providing results useful of helping to mitigate water erosion and promote sustainable land use planning. This study estimates the water erosion rates in the Espírito Santo state by RUSLE and compares them with the soil loss tolerance (T) limits. The parameters used in the model are the land use and management, the soil attributes, the relief and the climate factors. Approximately 38.65% of the state's area shows soil loss above the T limit (7.79 - 14.14 Mg ha-1 year-1). The areas with steeper slopes and low vegetation cover have most of the highest erosion rates. The mean annual soil loss of the entire state is 33.55 Mg ha-1 year-1. RUSLE provided a diagnosis useful of directing erosion mitigation measures to the most susceptible areas, enabling sustainable planning to support the state's socio-economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Deltaic systems possess singular morphology and represent a portion of the Brazilian large fluvial systems, with complex dynamics and mouths located at the Atlantic Ocean. Landscapes generated are occupied by diverse human activities over the coast and depend on a certain degree of dynamic equilibrium to its maintenance. The mouth of Jequitinhonha River, located at the extreme South of Bahia state, has suffered great transformations over the last decades, causing coastal erosion processes due to fluvial discharge reduction, thus changing the local dynamic. So, to understand the preterit deltaic dynamic and the possible agents of the current changes, we proposed an approach utilizing grain size and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) of the deposits by the river mouth, with the processes currently demonstrated. The main results point to mixed depositional environment over the sampling points and additionally in depths, demonstrating cyclicity of depositional agents and energy. Depositional ages obtained were 2.72 ± 0.23 (Ky) for the left riverbank, 1.1 ± 0.15 (Ky) for the right riverbank, and the youngest deposit located at the front island, with absolute dating of 0.555 ± 0.065 (Ky). The results evidence a tendency of coastal progradation during the last thousands of years, prior to anthropic interventions which diminished and regulated fluvial discharge of Jequitinhonha River, resulting in advancement of local coastal erosive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...