Spondias tuberosa trees grown in tropical, wet environments are more susceptible to drought than those grown in arid environments.

In this study, we investigated the different responses of Spondias tuberosa (umbu) trees, which grow in two different ecological life zones in northeast Brazil: tropical wet and tropical arid ecosystems. We evaluated the responses of plants grown under humid and dry conditions by measuring the photosynthesis, water status, fluorescence parameters, carbon isotopes and antioxidant system activity. The higher net photosynthesis values were recorded contemporaneously with the lower VPD values. The highest internal-to-ambient CO2 concentration and the absence of typical changes in the fluorescence parameters suggested an onset of a nonstomatal limitation in the photosynthesis. Our results showed that umbu plants can adjust their antioxidant activity during the dry season as a defensive strategy against the deleterious effects of water stress. This evidence is supported by the observed modifications in the pigment concentrations, increased accumulation of hydrogen peroxide and malondialdehyde, high levels of electrolyte leakage, increased antioxidant activity, and decreased carbon isotope discrimination in the umbu trees during the dry season. Supported by multivariate analysis of variance, significantly effect of interaction between categorical months of collect and location predicts a strong ?dry season effect? on our dataset. Taken together, our data show that umbu trees grown in a wet tropical environment are more susceptible to drought, as compared with their tropical arid counterparts.

Assessing the safety of Pseudomonas putida introduction in the environment: an overview of ecotoxicological tests.

Risk assessment guidelines for the environmental release of microbial agents are performed in a tiered sequence which includes evaluation of exposure effects on non target organisms. However, it becomes important to verify whether environmental risk assessment from temperate studies is applicable to tropical countries, as Brazil. Pseudomonas putida is a bacteria showing potential to be used for environmental applications as bioremediation and plant disease control. This study investigates the effects of this bacteria exposure on rodents and aquatic organisms (Daphnia similes) that are recommended to be used as non-target organism in environmental risk assessments. Also, the microbial activity in three different soils under P. putida exposure was evaluated. Rats did not show clinical alterations, although the agent was recovered 16 h after the exposure in lung homogenates. The bacteria did not reduce significantly the reproduction and survival of D. similis. The soil enzymatic activities presented fluctuating values after inoculation with bacteria. The measurement of perturbations in soil biochemical characteristics is presented as an alternative way of monitoring the overall effects of the microbial agent to be introduced even in first stage (Tier I) of the risk assessment in tropical ecosystems.

Climate seasonality limits leaf carbon assimilation and wood productivity in tropical forests.

The seasonal climate drivers of the carbon cy- cle in tropical forests remain poorly known, although these forests account for more carbon assimilation and storage than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Based on a unique combina- tion of seasonal pan-tropical data sets from 89 experimental sites (68 include aboveground wood productivity measure- ments and 35 litter productivity measurements), their asso- ciated canopy photosynthetic capacity (enhanced vegetation index, EVI) and climate, we ask how carbon assimilation and aboveground allocation are related to climate seasonal- ity in tropical forests and how they interact in the seasonal carbon cycle. We found that canopy photosynthetic capacity seasonality responds positively to precipitation when rain- fall is < 2000 mm yr-1 (water-limited forests) and to radia- tion otherwise (light-limited forests). On the other hand, in- dependent of climate limitations, wood productivity and lit- terfall are driven by seasonal variation in precipitation and evapotranspiration, respectively. Consequently, light-limited forests present an asynchronism between canopy photosyn- thetic capacity and wood productivity. First-order control by precipitation likely indicates a decrease in tropical forest pro- ductivity in a drier climate in water-limited forest, and in cur- rent light-limited forest with future rainfall < 2000 mm yr-1.

A methodological framework to assess the carbon balance of tropical managed forests.

Background: Managed forests are a major component of tropical landscapes. Production forests as designated by national forest services cover up to 400 million ha, i.e. half of the forested area in the humid tropics. Forest management thus plays a major role in the global carbon budget, but with a lack of unified method to estimate carbon fluxes from tropical managed forests. In this study we propose a new time- and spatially-explicit methodology to estimate the above-ground carbon budget of selective logging at regional scale. Results: The yearly balance of a logging unit, i.e. the elementary management unit of a forest estate, is modelled by aggregating three sub-models encompassing (i) emissions from extracted wood, (ii) emissions from logging damage and deforested areas and (iii) carbon storage from post-logging recovery. Models are parametrised and uncertainties are propagated through a MCMC algorithm. As a case study, we used 38 years of National Forest Inventories in French Guiana, northeastern Amazonia, to estimate the above-ground carbon balance (i.e. the net carbon exchange with the atmosphere) of selectively logged forests. Over this period, the net carbon balance of selective logging in the French Guianan Permanent Forest Estate is estimated to be comprised between 0.12 and 1.33 Tg C, with a median value of 0.64 Tg C. Uncertainties over the model could be diminished by improving the accuracy of both logging damage and large woody necromass decay submodels. Conclusions: We propose an innovating carbon accounting framework relying upon basic logging statistics. This flexible tool allows carbon budget of tropical managed forests to be estimated in a wide range of tropical regions

Aromatic stability of Syrah and Petit Verdot tropical wines from Brazil.

The production of fine wines in the Sub-middle of the São Francisco River Valley, Northeast of Brazil, is relatively recent, about twenty-five years ago. This region presents different characteristics, with a tropical semiarid climate, in a flat landscape. Presenting high annual average temperature, solar radiation and water in abundance for irrigation, it?s possible the scaling the grape harvests for winemaking throughout the year, allowing to obtain until two harvests per year. Several factors may affect the aromatic compounds in wines, such as viticulture practices, climatic conditions, cultivars and winemaking process. This study aimed to evaluate the aromatic stability of Syrah and Petit Verdot tropical wines elaborated in two different periods in the year. The grapes were harvested in the first and second semesters of 2009, in June and November. The wines were elaborated and then, they were bottled and analyzed in triplicate, thirty days and one year after bottling, by gas chromatography with ionization detector flame (GC-FID), to evaluate the profile and the stability of the aroma compounds. Principal component analysis was applied to discriminate between wine samples and to find the compounds responsible by the variability. The results showed that Syrah and Petit Verdot tropical wines presented different responses, for stability of higher alcohols, esters and carboxylic acids.

Comparison of multitemporal MODIS-EVI smoothing algorithms and its contribution to crop monitoring.

Crop monitoring and more generally land use change detection are of primary importance in order to analyze spatio-temporal dynamics and its impacts on environment. This aspect is especially true in such a region as the State of Mato Grosso (south of the Brazilian Amazon Basin) which hosts an intensive pioneer front. Deforestation in this region as often been explained by soybean expansion in the last three decades. Remote sensing techniques may now represent an efficient and objective manner to quantify how crops expansion really represents a factor of deforestation through crop mapping studies. Due to the special characteristics of the soybean productions' farms in Mato Grosso (area varying between 1000 hectares and 40000 hectares and individual fields often bigger than 100 hectares), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data with a near daily temporal resolution and 250 m spatial resolution can be considered as adequate resources to crop mapping. Especially, multitemporal vegetation indices (VI) studies have been currently used to realize this task [1] [2]. In this study, 16-days compositions of EVI (MODQ13 product) data are used. However, although these data are already processed, multitemporal VI profiles still remain noisy due to cloudiness (which is extremely frequent in a tropical region such as south Amazon Basin), sensor problems, errors in atmospheric corrections or BRDF effect. Thus, many works tried to develop algorithms that could smooth the multitemporal VI profiles in order to improve further classification. The goal of this study is to compare and test different smoothing algorithms in order to select the one which satisfies better to the demand which is classifying crop classes. Those classes correspond to 6 different agricultural managements observed in Mato Grosso through an intensive field work which resulted in mapping more than 1000 individual fields. The agricultural managements above mentioned are based on combination of soy, cotton, corn, millet and sorghum crops sowed in single or double crop systems. Due to the difficulty in separating certain classes because of too similar agricultural calendars, the classification will be reduced to 3 classes : Cotton (single crop), Soy and cotton (double crop), soy (single or double crop with corn, millet or sorghum). The classification will use training data obtained in the 2005-2006 harvest and then be tested on the 2006-2007 harvest. In a first step, four smoothing techniques are presented and criticized. Those techniques are Best Index Slope Extraction (BISE) [3], Mean Value Iteration (MVI) [4], Weighted Least Squares (WLS) [5] and Savitzky-Golay Filter (SG) [6] [7]. These techniques are then implemented and visually compared on a few individual pixels so that it allows doing a first selection between the five studied techniques. The WLS and SG techniques are selected according to criteria proposed by [8]. Those criteria are: ability in eliminating frequent noises, conserving the upper values of the VI profiles and keeping the temporality of the profiles. Those selected algorithms are then programmed and applied to the MODIS/TERRA EVI data (16-days composition periods). Tests of separability are realized based on the Jeffries-Matusita distance in order to see if the algorithms managed in improving the potential of differentiation between the classes. Those tests are realized on the overall profile (comprising 23 MODIS images) as well as on each MODIS sub-period of the profile [1]. This last test is a double interest process because it allows comparing the smoothing techniques and also enables to select a set of images which carries more information on the separability between the classes. Those selected dates can then be used to realize a supervised classification. Here three different classifiers are tested to evaluate if the smoothing techniques as a particular effect on the classification depending on the classifiers used. Those classifiers are Maximum Likelihood classifier, Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classifier and CHAID Improved Decision tree. It appears through the separability tests on the overall process that the smoothed profiles don't improve efficiently the potential of discrimination between classes when compared with the original data. However, the same tests realized on the MODIS sub-periods show better results obtained with the smoothed algorithms. The results of the classification confirm this first analyze. The Kappa coefficients are always better with the smoothing techniques and the results obtained with the WLS and SG smoothed profiles are nearly equal. However, the results are different depending on the classifier used. The impact of the smoothing algorithms is much better while using the decision tree model. Indeed, it allows a gain of 0.1 in the Kappa coefficient. While using the Maximum Likelihood end SAM models, the gain remains positive but is much lower (Kappa improved of 0.02 only). Thus, this work's aim is to prove the utility in smoothing the VI profiles in order to improve the final results. However, the choice of the smoothing algorithm has to be made considering the original data used and the classifier models used. In that case the Savitzky-Golay filter gave the better results.

Determination of bioactive amines in tropical wines produced at Brazilian's Northeast.

The wine production in the region of the Sub-middle São Francisco river Valley has started there are few years ago.The region has a climate variability that allows to obtain two or three harvests per year, which influences significantly the composition of the grapes. This work aimed to evaluate the amount of amines present in white and red tropical wines produced in the Northeast of Brazil. The winemaking was done by the traditional method. After stabilizing the wines were bottled and then analyzed for the determination of the amines putrescine, spermidine and spermine, by thin layer chromatography (TLC). The harvests were in June (harvest I) and November (harvest II) 2009. The results showed that the edaphoclimatic conditions of the two harvests had significant influence (p> 0.05) on bioactive amines concentration, with high values for red wines. In addition, tropical wines from Sub-middle São Francisco river Valley showed adequate correlation between bioactive amines as compared to other wines in the world.