Climate change and its impacts on ecosystem services: a social ecological study in the eastern and central Brazilian Amazon

Author(s)

Moara Almeida Canova Teixeira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2023-04-24

Examining board members

David Montenegro Lapola; Roberto Donato da Silva Júnior; Gabriela Marques Di Giulio; Aliny Patrícia Flauzino Pires

• Advisor: David Montenegro Lapola; Patrícia Fernanda do Pinho Koberle

Abstract

The rising CO2 emissions and rapid climate changes threat the tropical forests. The Amazon Forest Dieback hypothesis predicts that hotter temperature and the drought will convert the current forests of Amazon basin into savannah landscapes, which would produce a new structure of ecosystem functionality of vegetal species. The ecosystem functionality is liable for the ecological processes, which supply satisfy services of needs of social well-being in the region, i.e. Ecosystem Services (ES). Therefore, the research aimed, through Functional Diversity (FD) approach, to evaluate how the ES related to CO2 storage and sink are affected by climate changes and which are their impacts to adaptation capacity of rural and urban population from Brazilian Amazon. Then, the first analysis is based on an ecological assessment, applying the Carbon and Ecosystem Functional-Trait Evaluation-CAETE model to modelling the vegetation FD responses in a scenario of 50 % of precipitation reduction. This scenario shows a changing non-redundant to the current vegetal composition baseline, with dominance of plant life strategies related to the drought environments, which implying a reduction between 37 to 49% of total carbon storage in the basin and more carbon content converted to the atmosphere. This result translates direct impacts to global and local climate regulation and indirect to shifting of water flux and to native provisioning services. The second evaluating is on social dimension ambit, through drafting of Social Ecological Vulnerability Index (SEVI) with secondary data and approach based on perception with semi-structured interviews in the municipalities of Manaus, Itacoatiara e Silves in the state of Amazonas and Ilha de Cotijuba in the Belém city in the state of Pará. The SEVI points out that the common factor of the vulnerability among the municipalities was the indicators of the socio-climate exposure for susceptibility to disasters, to rising temperature prediction and FD changes. The SEVI result summed to FD modelling demonstrate that the social well-being of communities is threated due to the impacts on the native ES, even though they are placed in the one of most bio-diverse forest from the globe. In addition, the susceptibility to diseases related to climate change increases in the regions greater urbanized (score 2.5, in the range from 0 low to 4 high vulnerability) with in turn can undermine the public health system in the urban centres in expanding in the Amazonia. Thus, the analysis based on perception and the SEVI reveal that the impacts given the shifting of FD of modelled vegetal community does not represent a distant threat to the social well-being, health and income, but rather aggravate the socio-ecological vulnerability. In view that, people recognizes and relate the hazards in the infrastructure (ES of erosion control), in the mobility and food supplies (ES of water flux and fish and wild food) to drought increase, extreme events and to deforestations. To face these impacts, people employs autonomous adaptation strategies for livelihoods turned to agribusiness sector, which despite the highest economic profit, this sector is not based on the ecosystem. Therefore, all the results support the challenges for the development of public policies of climate adaptation involving social health, future maintenance of provisioning native ES, above all in the municipalities with inadequate socioeconomic indicators (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 19/02452-2 - Ecosystem services and vulnerability to climate changes: biophysical and social relationships in the Central Amazon
• Grantee: Moara Almeida Canova Teixeira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate