Márcia N Macedo
Biographic Data
| ID | 5138093 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Márcia N Macedo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Márcia N |
| FAMILY NAME | Macedo |
| SIGNATURE | MACEDO M N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Woodwell Climate Research Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8102-5901 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Amazonian forest resilience inferred from fire-induced changes in carbon stocks and tree diversity
Understanding the resilience of tropical forests to fire is essential for evaluating their dynamics under climate change and increasing land-use pressures. Here, we assess how different fire frequencies and intensities influence tree mortality and carbon dynamics in southeastern Amazonia. Using a replicated randomized block design with 24 plots (40 × 40 m), we applied four treatments: unburned control, one burn in 2016 (B1), two burns in 2013 and…
Speakers' subjective evaluations of direct object pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese
Direct object pronouns show considerable variation in Brazilian Portuguese, where normative clitic pronouns compete with their tonic counterparts. However, no prior studies have investigated empirically speaker evaluations of these competing pronoun variants. We created a perception experiment of direct object pronouns in spoken Brazilian Portuguese, in order to investigate the role of attitudes and social evaluations in language variation. Resul…
Can we avert an Amazon tipping point? The economic and environmental costs
The Amazon biome is being pushed by unsustainable economic drivers towards an ecological tipping point where restoration to its previous state may no longer be possible. This degradation is the result of self-reinforcing interactions between deforestation, climate change and fire. We assess the economic, natural capital and ecosystem services impacts and trade-offs of scenarios representing movement towards an Amazon tipping point and strategies …
Intensification of fire regimes and forest loss in the Território Indígena do Xingu
The contemporary fire regime of southern Amazonian forests has been dominated by interactions between droughts and sources of fire ignition associated with deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture. Until recently, wildfires have been concentrated mostly on private properties, with protected areas functioning as large-scale firebreaks along the Amazon’s agricultural frontier. However, as the climate changes, protected forests have become incre…
The role of forest conversion, degradation, and disturbance in the carbon dynamics of Amazon indigenous territories and protected areas
Maintaining the abundance of carbon stored aboveground in Amazon forests is central to any comprehensive climate stabilization strategy. Growing evidence points to indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) as buffers against large-scale carbon emissions across a nine-nation network of indigenous territories (ITs) and protected natural areas (PNAs). Previous studies have demonstrated a link between indigenous land management and avoided def…
Potential shifts in the aboveground biomass and physiognomy of a seasonally dry tropical forest in a changing climate
Seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) account for one-third of the interannual variability of global net primary productive (NPP). Large-scale shifts in dry tropical forest structure may thus significantly affect global CO 2 fluxes in ways that are not fully accounted for in current projections. This study quantifies how changing climate might reshape one of the largest SDTFs in the world, the Caatinga region of northeast Brazil. We combine his…
Solving Brazil's land use puzzle
Brazil has become an agricultural powerhouse, producing roughly 30 % of the world’s soy and 15 % of its beef by 2013 – yet historically much of that growth has come at the expense of its native ecosystems. Since 1985, pastures and croplands have replaced nearly 65 Mha of forests and savannas in the legal Amazon. A growing body of work suggests that this paradigm of horizontal expansion of agriculture over ecosystems is outdated and brings negativ…
Cattle production in Southern Amazonia
The expansion of cattle in central western Brazil has been under scrutiny because of the region’s historic reliance on Amazon and Cerrado deforestation for cropland and pastureland expansion. In this study, we determined the volumetric water footprint (VWF) and the land footprint (LF) of cattle in Mato Grosso state for the years 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2014 using official statistics and remote sensing imagery. We found the average VWF of cattle for …
Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation
Significance Brazil’s new Forest Code has the potential to halt illegal deforestation in the country’s native forests and savannas through implementation of a federal land registry—along with powerful tools that facilitate enforcement and give landowners a pathway to restoring or compensating their “forest deficits.” This study suggests that these tools fall short of their promise. Although landowners in eastern Amazonia have been motivated to jo…
Forest carbon emissions from cropland expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado biome
Land use, land use change, and forestry accounted for two-thirds of Brazil?s greenhouse gas emissions profile in 2005. Amazon deforestation has declined by more than 80% over the past decade, yet Brazil?s forests extend beyond the Amazon biome. Rapid expansion of cropland in the neighboring Cerrado biome has the potential to undermine climate mitigation efforts if emissions from dry forest and woodland conversion negate some of the benefits of av…
Current and future patterns of fire-induced forest degradation in Amazonia
Amazon droughts directly increase forest flammability by reducing forest understory air and fuel moisture. Droughts also increase forest flammability indirectly by decreasing soil moisture, triggering leaf shedding, branch loss, and tree mortality—all of which contribute to increased fuel loads. These direct and indirect effects can cause widespread forest fires that reduce forest carbon stocks in the Amazon, with potentially important consequenc…
Reevaluating suitability estimates based on dynamics of cropland expansion in the Brazilian Amazon
Agricultural expansion dominates climate changes in southeastern Amazonia
Tropical deforestation changes the surface energy balance and water cycle, but how much change occurs strongly depends on the land uses that follow deforestation. Here, we quantify how recent (2000–2010) transitions among widespread land uses (i.e., forests, croplands, and pastures) altered the water and energy balance in the Xingu region of southeast Amazonia. Spatial-temporal analyses of multiple satellite data sets revealed that forest-to-crop…
Abrupt increases in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought–fire interactions
Significance Climate change alone is unlikely to drive severe tropical forest degradation in the next few decades, but an alternative process associated with severe weather and forest fires is already operating in southeastern Amazonia. Recent droughts caused greatly elevated fire-induced tree mortality in a fire experiment and widespread regional forest fires that burned 5–12% of southeastern Amazon forests. These results suggest that feedbacks …
Cracking Brazil's Forest Code
Brazil's controversial new Forest Code grants amnesty to illegal deforesters, but creates new mechanisms for forest conservation.
Multiple pathways of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes
Commodity crop expansion, for both global and domestic urban markets, follows multiple land change pathways entailing direct and indirect deforestation, and results in various social and environmental impacts. Here we compare six published case studies of rapid commodity crop expansion within forested tropical regions. Across cases, between 1.7% and 89.5% of new commodity cropland was sourced from forestlands. Four main factors controlled pathway…
Decoupling of deforestation and soy production in the southern Amazon during the late 2000s
From 2006 to 2010, deforestation in the Amazon frontier state of Mato Grosso decreased to 30% of its historical average (1996–2005) whereas agricultural production reached an all-time high. This study combines satellite data with government deforestation and production statistics to assess land-use transitions and potential market and policy drivers associated with these trends. In the forested region of the state, increased soy production from 2…
Solving Brazil's land use puzzle
Brazil has become an agricultural powerhouse, producing roughly 30 % of the world’s soy and 15 % of its beef by 2013 – yet historically much of that growth has come at the expense of its native ecosystems. Since 1985, pastures and croplands have replaced nearly 65 Mha of forests and savannas in the legal Amazon. A growing body of work suggests that this paradigm of horizontal expansion of agriculture over ecosystems is outdated and brings negativ…
Reevaluating suitability estimates based on dynamics of cropland expansion in the Brazilian Amazon
Intensification of fire regimes and forest loss in the Território Indígena do Xingu
The contemporary fire regime of southern Amazonian forests has been dominated by interactions between droughts and sources of fire ignition associated with deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture. Until recently, wildfires have been concentrated mostly on private properties, with protected areas functioning as large-scale firebreaks along the Amazon’s agricultural frontier. However, as the climate changes, protected forests have become incre…
Decoupling of deforestation and soy production in the southern Amazon during the late 2000s
From 2006 to 2010, deforestation in the Amazon frontier state of Mato Grosso decreased to 30% of its historical average (1996–2005) whereas agricultural production reached an all-time high. This study combines satellite data with government deforestation and production statistics to assess land-use transitions and potential market and policy drivers associated with these trends. In the forested region of the state, increased soy production from 2…
Abrupt increases in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought–fire interactions
Significance Climate change alone is unlikely to drive severe tropical forest degradation in the next few decades, but an alternative process associated with severe weather and forest fires is already operating in southeastern Amazonia. Recent droughts caused greatly elevated fire-induced tree mortality in a fire experiment and widespread regional forest fires that burned 5–12% of southeastern Amazon forests. These results suggest that feedbacks …
Cracking Brazil's Forest Code
Brazil's controversial new Forest Code grants amnesty to illegal deforesters, but creates new mechanisms for forest conservation.
Multiple pathways of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes
Commodity crop expansion, for both global and domestic urban markets, follows multiple land change pathways entailing direct and indirect deforestation, and results in various social and environmental impacts. Here we compare six published case studies of rapid commodity crop expansion within forested tropical regions. Across cases, between 1.7% and 89.5% of new commodity cropland was sourced from forestlands. Four main factors controlled pathway…
Agricultural expansion dominates climate changes in southeastern Amazonia
Tropical deforestation changes the surface energy balance and water cycle, but how much change occurs strongly depends on the land uses that follow deforestation. Here, we quantify how recent (2000–2010) transitions among widespread land uses (i.e., forests, croplands, and pastures) altered the water and energy balance in the Xingu region of southeast Amazonia. Spatial-temporal analyses of multiple satellite data sets revealed that forest-to-crop…
Reevaluating suitability estimates based on dynamics of cropland expansion in the Brazilian Amazon
Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation
Significance Brazil’s new Forest Code has the potential to halt illegal deforestation in the country’s native forests and savannas through implementation of a federal land registry—along with powerful tools that facilitate enforcement and give landowners a pathway to restoring or compensating their “forest deficits.” This study suggests that these tools fall short of their promise. Although landowners in eastern Amazonia have been motivated to jo…
Forest carbon emissions from cropland expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado biome
Land use, land use change, and forestry accounted for two-thirds of Brazil?s greenhouse gas emissions profile in 2005. Amazon deforestation has declined by more than 80% over the past decade, yet Brazil?s forests extend beyond the Amazon biome. Rapid expansion of cropland in the neighboring Cerrado biome has the potential to undermine climate mitigation efforts if emissions from dry forest and woodland conversion negate some of the benefits of av…
Current and future patterns of fire-induced forest degradation in Amazonia
Amazon droughts directly increase forest flammability by reducing forest understory air and fuel moisture. Droughts also increase forest flammability indirectly by decreasing soil moisture, triggering leaf shedding, branch loss, and tree mortality—all of which contribute to increased fuel loads. These direct and indirect effects can cause widespread forest fires that reduce forest carbon stocks in the Amazon, with potentially important consequenc…
Cattle production in Southern Amazonia
The expansion of cattle in central western Brazil has been under scrutiny because of the region’s historic reliance on Amazon and Cerrado deforestation for cropland and pastureland expansion. In this study, we determined the volumetric water footprint (VWF) and the land footprint (LF) of cattle in Mato Grosso state for the years 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2014 using official statistics and remote sensing imagery. We found the average VWF of cattle for …
The role of forest conversion, degradation, and disturbance in the carbon dynamics of Amazon indigenous territories and protected areas
Maintaining the abundance of carbon stored aboveground in Amazon forests is central to any comprehensive climate stabilization strategy. Growing evidence points to indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) as buffers against large-scale carbon emissions across a nine-nation network of indigenous territories (ITs) and protected natural areas (PNAs). Previous studies have demonstrated a link between indigenous land management and avoided def…
Potential shifts in the aboveground biomass and physiognomy of a seasonally dry tropical forest in a changing climate
Seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) account for one-third of the interannual variability of global net primary productive (NPP). Large-scale shifts in dry tropical forest structure may thus significantly affect global CO 2 fluxes in ways that are not fully accounted for in current projections. This study quantifies how changing climate might reshape one of the largest SDTFs in the world, the Caatinga region of northeast Brazil. We combine his…
Solving Brazil's land use puzzle
Brazil has become an agricultural powerhouse, producing roughly 30 % of the world’s soy and 15 % of its beef by 2013 – yet historically much of that growth has come at the expense of its native ecosystems. Since 1985, pastures and croplands have replaced nearly 65 Mha of forests and savannas in the legal Amazon. A growing body of work suggests that this paradigm of horizontal expansion of agriculture over ecosystems is outdated and brings negativ…
Speakers' subjective evaluations of direct object pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese
Direct object pronouns show considerable variation in Brazilian Portuguese, where normative clitic pronouns compete with their tonic counterparts. However, no prior studies have investigated empirically speaker evaluations of these competing pronoun variants. We created a perception experiment of direct object pronouns in spoken Brazilian Portuguese, in order to investigate the role of attitudes and social evaluations in language variation. Resul…
Can we avert an Amazon tipping point? The economic and environmental costs
The Amazon biome is being pushed by unsustainable economic drivers towards an ecological tipping point where restoration to its previous state may no longer be possible. This degradation is the result of self-reinforcing interactions between deforestation, climate change and fire. We assess the economic, natural capital and ecosystem services impacts and trade-offs of scenarios representing movement towards an Amazon tipping point and strategies …
Intensification of fire regimes and forest loss in the Território Indígena do Xingu
The contemporary fire regime of southern Amazonian forests has been dominated by interactions between droughts and sources of fire ignition associated with deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture. Until recently, wildfires have been concentrated mostly on private properties, with protected areas functioning as large-scale firebreaks along the Amazon’s agricultural frontier. However, as the climate changes, protected forests have become incre…
Amazonian forest resilience inferred from fire-induced changes in carbon stocks and tree diversity
Understanding the resilience of tropical forests to fire is essential for evaluating their dynamics under climate change and increasing land-use pressures. Here, we assess how different fire frequencies and intensities influence tree mortality and carbon dynamics in southeastern Amazonia. Using a replicated randomized block design with 24 plots (40 × 40 m), we applied four treatments: unburned control, one burn in 2016 (B1), two burns in 2013 and…
Geography (14 works) · Environmental Science (12 works) · Agroforestry (11 works) · Amazon rainforest (11 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (11 works) · Ecology (10 works) · Agriculture (8 works) · Climate change (7 works) · Land use (7 works) · Deforestation (computer science (6 works)