Search results for "Amazon rainforest"
showing 10 items of 35 documents
Record-breaking warming and extreme drought in the Amazon rainforest during the course of El Niño 2015–2016
2016
AbstractThe El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the main driver of interannual climate extremes in Amazonia and other tropical regions. The current 2015/2016 EN event was expected to be as strong as the EN of the century in 1997/98, with extreme heat and drought over most of Amazonian rainforests. Here we show that this protracted EN event, combined with the regional warming trend, was associated with unprecedented warming and a larger extent of extreme drought in Amazonia compared to the earlier strong EN events in 1982/83 and 1997/98. Typical EN-like drought conditions were observed only in eastern Amazonia, whilst in western Amazonia there was an unusual wetting. We attribute this wet…
Pharmaceuticals and other urban contaminants threaten Amazonian freshwater ecosystems
2021
Abstract Urban areas in the Brazilian Amazon have grown at an unprecedented rate during the last years. About 90% of the wastewater produced by these urban areas are discharged untreated into Amazonian freshwater ecosystems, constituting a potential environmental pathway for pharmaceuticals and other chemicals consumed by modern societies (e.g. psychostimulants, personal-care products, hormones). The distribution of these chemicals into the Amazon River and their potential risks for freshwater biodiversity have not been evaluated so far. Here, we show the results of the largest chemical monitoring campaign conducted in the Amazon region. We assessed exposure patterns for 43 pharmaceuticals …
Trends in global research in deforestation. A bibliometric analysis
2018
The main aim of this study was to analyse topics of research, scientific production, collaboration among countries, and most cited papers on deforestation through a bibliometric and social network study of articles found in the Web of Science database. The most productive subject areas corresponded to Environmental Sciences, Ecology and Environmental Studies. The articles were published in 458 different journals. A total of 2051 research articles were obtained. The main challenges identified for deforestation include “land use change” “conservation” “climate change” “rain forest” and “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation”. Social and economic topics are understudied. An imp…
Parallel diversifications of Cremastosperma and mosannona (annonaceae), tropical rainforest trees tracking neogene upheaval of South America
2018
Much of the immense present day biological diversity of Neotropical rainforests originated from the Miocene onwards, a period of geological and ecological upheaval in South America. We assess the impact of the Andean orogeny, drainage of Lake Pebas and closure of the Panama isthmus on two clades of tropical trees ( Cremastosperma , ca 31 spp.; and Mosannona , ca 14 spp.; both Annonaceae). Phylogenetic inference revealed similar patterns of geographically restricted clades and molecular dating showed diversifications in the different areas occurred in parallel, with timing consistent with Andean vicariance and Central American geodispersal. Ecological niche modelling approaches show phyloge…
Land cover and its transformation in the backward trajectory footprint region of the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory
2019
Abstract. The Amazon rain forest experiences the combined pressures from human-made deforestation and progressing climate change, causing severe and potentially disruptive perturbations of the ecosystem's integrity and stability. To intensify research on critical aspects of Amazonian biosphere–atmosphere exchange, the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) has been established in the central Amazon Basin. Here we present a multi-year analysis of backward trajectories to derive an effective footprint region of the observatory, which spans large parts of the particularly vulnerable eastern basin. Further, we characterize geospatial properties of the footprint regions, such as climatic condition…
An annotated checklist of freshwater Copepoda (Crustacea, Hexanauplia) from continental Ecuador and the Galapagos Archipelago.
2019
An annotated checklist of the free-living freshwater Copepoda recorded in different regions in Ecuador (including the Amazon, the Andes, the coastal region, and the Galapagos Islands) is here provided. We revised all published records, critically evaluated the validity of each taxon and provided short taxonomic and biogeographical remarks for each one. A total of 27 taxa have been reported, including species and records at the generic level only. The species and taxa identified only up to the generic level belong to five families and 14 genera. The Cyclopoida is the most diverse group with 16 records belonging to species (or identified to the generic level only) and eight genera, followed b…
UJI RobInLab's approach to the Amazon Robotics Challenge 2017
2017
This paper describes the approach taken by the team from the Robotic Intelligence Laboratory at Jaume I University to the Amazon Robotics Challenge 2017. The goal of the challenge is to automate pick and place operations in unstructured environments, specifically the shelves in an Amazon warehouse. RobInLab's approach is based on a Baxter Research robot and a customized storage system. The system's modular architecture, based on ROS, allows communication between two computers, two Arduinos and the Baxter. It integrates 9 hardware components along with 10 different algorithms to accomplish the pick and stow tasks. We describe the main components and pipelines of the system, along with some e…
A Lexicon-based Approach for Sentiment Classification of Amazon Books Reviews in Italian Language
2016
We present a system aimed at the automatic classification of the sentiment orientation expressed into book reviews written in Italian language. The system we have developed is found on a lexicon-based approach and uses NLP techniques in order to take into account the linguistic relation between terms in the analyzed texts. The classification of a review is based on the average sentiment strenght of its sentences, while the classification of each sentence is obtained through a parsing process inspecting, for each term, a window of previous items to detect particular combinations of elements giving inversions or variations of polarity. The score of a single word depends on all the associated …
Black and brown carbon over central Amazonia: long-term aerosol measurements at the ATTO site
2018
The Amazon rainforest is a sensitive ecosystem experiencing the combined pressures of progressing deforestation and climate change. Its atmospheric conditions oscillate between biogenic and biomass burning (BB) dominated states. The Amazon further represents one of the few remaining continental places where the atmosphere approaches pristine conditions during occasional wet season episodes. The Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) has been established in central Amazonia to investigate the complex interactions between the rainforest ecosystem and the atmosphere. Physical and chemical aerosol properties have been analyzed continuously since 2012. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of t…
Influx of African biomass burning aerosol during the Amazonian dry season through layered transatlantic transport of black carbon-rich smoke
2020
Black carbon (BC) aerosols influence the Earth's atmosphere and climate, but their microphysical properties, spatiotemporal distribution, and long-range transport are not well constrained. This study presents airborne observations of the transatlantic transport of BC-rich African biomass burning (BB) smoke into the Amazon Basin using a Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2) as well as several complementary techniques. We base our results on observations of aerosols and trace gases off the Brazilian coast onboard the HALO (High Altitude and LOng range) research aircraft during the ACRIDICON-CHUVA campaign in September 2014. During flight AC19 over land and ocean at the northeastern coastline …