Environmental and Ecological Effects of Recent Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss in the Amazon Region

Dear Colleagues,

The Amazon region has the largest rainforest in the world; however, the anthropogenic pressure and associated land cover changes have led to large-scale forest losses, which have recently intensified, particularly in Brazil, even after a decade of effective forest conservation policy.

The Amazon rainforest influences the terrestrial climate system due to the exchanges of energy, carbon, and water between the surface and the atmosphere. In addition to providing water vapor to the environment through evapotranspiration, influencing the general circulation in the tropics and contributing to regional precipitation, the Amazon rainforest plays an important role in the global carbon cycle.

Recent studies have shown that the Amazon rainforest is a system in biophysical transition. In order to understand the effects of this transition on the environment, and vice versa, it is necessary to focus on different processes, including the trade-offs between biodiversity loss and ecosystem services.

We look forward to receiving your contributions to this Special Issue on the broad topic of “Environmental and Ecological Effects of Recent Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss in the Amazon Region”.

We welcome original research articles as well as review articles addressing, though not exclusively, the following topics:

New satellite data and tools to assess deforestation, forest fragmentation, and natural recovery; belowground biogeochemistry, plant demography and ecophysiology, plant functional traits, and aquifer-to-canopy hydrology; forest–atmosphere interactions; impacts of severe events such as droughts and fire; and resilience of the Amazon rainforest to extreme events, taking into consideration the drivers of land degradation and deforestation and further transitions under a climate change scenario.

Dr. Gabriel de Oliveira
Dr. Liming He
Dr. Guilherme A. V. Mataveli
Dr. Carlos Antonio Costa dos Santos
Dr. Yosio E. Shimabukuro
Guest Editors

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