Publications

Assis, T. O., Aguiar, A. P., von Randow, C., Nobre, C. A. Projections of future forest degradation and CO2 emissions for the Brazilian Amazon. Science Advances. https://doi-org.ezproxy.its.uu.se/10.1126/sciadv.abj3309

In recent years, the area affected by forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon has frequently been higher than deforestation. From August 2006 to July 2019, the degraded area totaled 194,058 km2, representing almost two times the 99,630 km2 deforested in the same period. The impacts of degradation include biodiversity loss and changes in the carbon stocks, affecting the CO2 balance and future climate changes. This paper aims...

Silva Bezerra, F. G., Mann de Toledo, P., von Randow, C., Aguiar, A. P. et al. 2022. Spatio-temporal analysis of dynamics and future scenarios of anthropic pressure on biomes in Brazil. Ecological Indicators. https://doi-org.ezproxy.its.uu.se/10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.108749

Anthropogenic transformations, which have become intensified by land use and land cover changes and industrialization, have contributed to increased anthropogenic pressure on biodiversity. These disturbances contribute toward fragmentating habitats at different scales and putting species at risk, in addition to compromising the main biogeochemical cycles. To better understand the spatiotemporal dynamics of anthropogenic pressu...

Laura Pereira, Jan J. Kuiper, Odirilwe Selomane, Ana Paula D. Aguiar, Ghassem R. Asrar, Elena M. Bennett, Reinette Biggs, Katherine Calvin, Steve Hedden, Angel Hsu, Jason Jabbour, Nicholas King, Alexandre C. Köberle, Paul Lucas, Jeanne Nel, Albert V. Norström, Garry Peterson, Nadia Sitas, Christopher Trisos, Detlef P. van Vuuren, Joost Vervoort & James Ward (2021) Advancing a toolkit of diverse futures approaches for global environmental assessments, Ecosystems and People, 17:1, 191-204, DOI: 10.1080/26395916.2021.1901783

Global Environmental Assessments (GEAs) are in a unique position to influence environmental decision-making in the context of sustainability challenges. To do this effectively, however, new methods are needed to respond to the needs of decision-makers for a more integrated, contextualized and goal-seeking evaluation of different policies, geared for action from global to local. While scenarios are an important tool for GEAs t...

Coelho, A., Aguiar, A., Toledo, P., Araujo, R., do Canto, O., Folhes, R. & Adami, M. 2021. Rural landscapes and agrarian spaces under soybean expansion dynamics: A case study of the Santarem region, Brazilian Amazonia. Regional Environmental Change 21(4) 100.

Following the boom of soybean production from 2000 to 2006 in the Santarém region of the Brazilian Amazon, the mechanized agricultural area remained stable, unlike other regions. Deforestation was controlled, but this initial expansion led to the restructuring of the agrarian space in the region. Given this scenario, we aimed to understand the mechanized agricultural expansion effects in the region by comparing the periods 199...

Silva Bezerra, F., Randow, C., Assis, T., Bezerra, K., Tejada, G., Castro, A., de Paula Gomes, D., Avancini, R., Aguiar, A.. 2021. New land use change scenarios for Brazil: refining global SSPs with a regional spatially-explicit allocation model. bioRxiv, http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.12.456156

The future of land use and cover change in Brazil, in particular due to deforestation and forest restoration processes, is critical for the future of global climate and biodiversity, given the richness of its five biomes. These changes in Brazil depend on the interlink between global factors, due to its role as one of the main exporters of commodities in the world, and the national to local institutional, socioeconomic and bio...

Downing, A., Wong, G.Y., Dyer, M., Aguiar, A. P., Selomane, O., Jimenez Aceituno, A. 2021. When the whole is less than the sum of all parts – Tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives. Global Environmental Change Volume 69, July 2021, 102306, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102306

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are described as integrated and indivisible, where sustainability challenges must be addressed across sectors and scales to achieve global-level sustainability. However, SDG monitoring mostly focuses on tracking progress at national-levels, for each goal individually. This approach ignores local and cross-border impacts of national policies and assumes that global-level ...

Lemos, C., Andrade, P., Rodrigues, R., Hissa, L., Aguiar, A.. 2021. Combining regional to local restoration goals in the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Regional Environmental Change. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01792-0

To achieve regional and international large-scale restoration goals with minimum costs, several restoration commitments rely on natural regeneration, a passive and inexpensive strategy. However, natural regeneration potential may vary within the landscape, mainly due to its historical context. In this work, we use spatially explicit restoration scenarios to explore how and where, within a given region, multiple restoration co...

Harmáčková, Z.V., Blättler, L., Aguiar, A.P.D. et al. 2021. Linking multiple values of nature with future impacts: value-based participatory scenario development for sustainable landscape governance. Sustain Sci, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00953-8

Reaching sustainable and just futures for people and nature requires tackling complex social-ecological challenges across multiple scales, from local to global. Pathways towards such futures are largely driven by people’s decisions and actions, underpinned by multiple types of motivations and values. Thus, understanding the link between potential futures and the values underpinning them represents a key question of current su...

Carvalho, R., de Aguiar, A.P.D. and Amaral, S., 2020. Diversity of cattle raising systems and its effects over forest regrowth in a core region of cattle production in the Brazilian Amazon. Regional Environmental Change, 20(2), pp.1-15.

Roughly 60% of all deforested lands in the Brazilian Amazon are covered with pastures, putting cattle raising in evidence as a major driver of deforestation and also of forests’ regrowth. Still, the role of cattle raising diversity in the landscape dynamics of this region remains poorly understood. To contribute to this discussion, we combined data from semi-structured interviews and quantitative spatially explicit methods to ...

Schneider, A., Hinton, J., Collste, D., González, T.S., Cortes-Calderon, S.V. and Aguiar, A.P.D., 2020. Can transnational corporations leverage systemic change towards a ‘sustainable’future?. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(4), pp.491-492.

To the Editor — We welcome the idea that transnational corporations (TNCs) can play a central role in the protection of the biosphere, recently contributed by Folke et al. 1 . It is certainly crucial to understand how TNCs affect the biosphere. While the authors provide a comprehensive overview of the impact of TNCs on the biosphere and propose some pathways through which TNCs might contribute to the stabilization of the E...