In the absence of access to formal credit, informal contracts with independent investors give the small ranchers of the Lower Amazon an acceptable means through which to surmount the high investment hurdle of starting a cattle herd. These contracts – called...

Understory fire modeling is a key tool to investigate the cornerstone concept of landscape ecology, i.e. how ecological processes relate to landscape structure and dynamics. Within this context, we developed FISC—a model that simulates fire ignition and spread and...

Approximately 2.5 × 10⁶ square kilometers of the Amazon forest are currently degraded by fire, edge effects, timber extraction, and/or extreme drought, representing 38% of all remaining forests in the region. Carbon emissions from this degradation total up to 0.2...