The firsts steps to create the Brazilian Critical Zone Observatories Network
Abstract
Brazil is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, represented by a range of forest and non-forest ecosystems which are used by humans for different purposes, such as food and energy production, mining and urbanization. Different uses of the Critical Zone (CZ) requires energy inputs and may cause imbalances in the rates of natural biogeochemical processes. Many studies are being conducted in Brazil in order to address the impacts of human activity in ecosystems, such as carbon storage after land use change, contamination of soils with heavy metals due to mining activities, effects of plough in hydrology and soil physical properties among others. Although some studies aim to find solutions facing global changes, still a lot must be done in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner. In this context, the creation of a Brazilian Critical Zone Network can serve as a catalyst for scientists who are interested in different compartments of the CZ and to create a research community aiming to tackle the issues related to each compartment by addressing the CZ as one entity. With this in mind, the Brazilian Critical Zone Symposium (BCZS) was a three-day meeting held in Piracicaba, Brazil, which putted together foreign CZ researchers and Brazilian researchers to present on-going interdisciplinary projects. The conference held 180 participants, with a main goal of discussing the great challenges related to environmental research in Brazil through the lenses of the CZ science. Two roundtables were designed to discuss the following: opportunities of financial support to create a network for the Brazilian Critical Zone Observatories (BCZO) and potential locations to install the observatories. From the roundtables, 8 major topics were listed for discussion by the scientific community during this initial process of creating the BCZO, as follows: integrating different areas, acquiring new options of financial support, strengthening the Brazilian CZ community, listing the guiding research questions, stimulating process-based science, stimulating continuous data collection, modelling and reviewing former experiments. During the presentation of this poster at the AGU meeting, we intend to discuss the main topics listed in the BCZS, the next steps to create the BCZO network and search for partners in Latin America and beyond.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B33J2622V
- Keywords:
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- 0410 Biodiversity;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0476 Plant ecology;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1616 Climate variability;
- GLOBAL CHANGE