Fluxes of gases (CO2, N2O and CH4) and alterations in the transformations of the nitrogen in the soil, in basins with forest and pasture cover on the northern coast of the State of São Paulo

• Grant number: 06/57063-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: February 01, 2007
• End date: January 31, 2009
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Jean Pierre Henry Balbaud Ometto
• Grantee: Jean Pierre Henry Balbaud Ometto
• Host Institution: Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The Atlantic Rainforest, one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet, today is considered as one of the priority biomas for the implementation of conservation policies.Its forest area, currently reduced to less than 8 per cent of its original cover, requires special attention in terms of understanding how it functions so as to better support its conservation. Despite the growing interest in environmental studies in this region, the emission of greenhouse effect gases and atributes correlated to these emissions have hardly been studied, including changes in the vegetal cover from forest to pasture, which are very common in this region. The present proposal has the principal objective of carrying out an integrated and comparative study of the dynamic of carbon and nitrogen, in addition to fluxes of N2O, CO2 and CH4 (greenhouse effect gases – GEG), intwo areas of the Serra do Mar with differing cover and land use. The study will be carried out in two basins, one with forest vegetal cover located in the Serra do Mar State Park, Santa Virginia nucleus, and one with pasture in the neighboring region. (AU)