Rainfall supplied from Amazon Forests to Brazil's croplands: where, how much, and the impact of deforestation

• Grant number: 23/05733-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: September 15, 2023
• End date: March 14, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Eduardo Oliveira e Cruz de Aragão
• Grantee: Marcus Vinicius de Freitas Silveira
• Supervisor: Patrick W. Keys
• Host Institution: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Colorado State University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/11698-8 - The effect of Amazon deforestation on climate and its link to agricultural sustainability, BP.DR

Abstract

Amazon forests play an important role as a source of moisture to rainfall formation across Brazil. With the extensive deforestation in the Amazon during the last decades, many croplands in Brazil whose rainfall partially depends on Amazon forests may be under increased climate risk, as the vast majority of Brazil's croplands are rainfed. Observational evidence for the effect of Amazon deforestation on rainfall provision, however, are still incipient and lack a spatially-explicit approach. Such evidence can be generated with the use of atmospheric moisture tracking models and precipitationshed analyses, but expertise for these two methodological approaches is still highly concentrated outside of Brazil. This project proposes an international research training with the goal of establishing international collaboration to my research and advancing the analyses required to answer the following research questions of my thesis: (i) How much of the rainfall in Brazilian soybean and second-crop maize areas comes from Amazon evapotranspiration? (ii) For the cropland regions with relevant dependence of Amazon evapotranspiration for rainfall, is it possible to detect a link between rainfall volume changes in these areas during the last decades and Amazon deforestation? During this research training, I plan to acquire the knowledge required to use the WAM-2layers model and perform precipitationshed analyses. The training is proposed to occur during the second semester of 2023, at the Colorado State University under the supervision of Dr. Patrick Keys, the scientist that developed the methods to delimit and analyze precipitationsheds. As part of the outcomes of this international experience, I plan to publish a paper in a journal with high-impact factor and help to disseminate precipitationshed science into Brazilian academia. (AU)