IAI Workshop: Biogeochemical Consequences of Land Use Change in the Amazon Basin

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9529836 Melillo The first major research issue which will be addressed by these workshops is the quantification of the areal extent of agricultural land in the southwestern Amazon Basin, past and present, and the patterns of agricultural use on large and small farms. The focus will be on what area the dominant agricultural land-uses occupy (pasture, row crops and small farm slash and burn) in the southwestern states of the Amazon Basin, how these areas vary on large and small farms, and how these areas have changed over the past thirty years. The second major issue is the quantification of the biogeochemical consequences of the dominant land uses in the southwestern Amazon Basin. The focus will be on how various agricultural land uses affect the cycling of carbon and nutrients in the southwestern Amazon Basin, and what are the consequences of these effects of soil fertility and the sustainability of agriculture, and for regional and global biogeochemistry. To address the above mentioned issues and questions, the PIs have established two tasks; Task 1 is a workshop; and Task 2 is a field trip and a workshop. Task 1 will involve a total of thirteen scientists for the workshop from the Brazilian and US scientific communities, and will emphasize inviting scientists from the Amazon Basin region. These scientists are also the participating scientists for Task 2. Task 2 will focus on the effects of the dominant land cover and land use conversion on biogeochemical cycles. The workshop structure is designed to enable individual subgroups to identify and outline proposals to be submitted as an IAI Phase II proposal. %%% The two workshops in this proposal will facilitate the preparation of proposals for Phase II of the IAI Start-Up Grants program. The objective of the Phase II proposal is that biogeochemical modification of cleared tropical forest lands and their consequences that control soil fertility and the sustainability of cropping or pasture systems. Because these areas affected are large, changes to nutrient and organic matter cycles also have the potential to influence regional and global element cycles. This proposal will be jointly administered by scientists from the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and the Centro de Energia na Agricultura (CENA) of the University of S o Paulo in Piracicaba, Brazil. This collaboration combines the strengths of two very active institutions for research on the biogeochemistry of global change in the United States and in Brazil. MBL and CENA currently jointly conduct research that examines the effects of forest clearing for pasture on carbon and nitrogen cycling in the State of Rond nia in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, and have collaborated in the sponsorship of several workshops in Brazil. The MBL-CENA collaboration was formalized in 1992 with the adoption of a formal research agreement between the MBL and the University of S o Paulo. In addition, this project will make significant progress toward involving the scientific community inside the Amazon Basin in studying patterns of land use change and their consequences for biogeochemistry at the international level. This goal is important to the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) science agenda, and both the United States and Brazil are Member States of the IAI, a U.S. initiative to stimulate cooperative research on global change issues among the scientific institutions of the Americas. The National Science Foundation is the U.S. Government agency designated to carry out U.S. responsibilities within the IAI.