From Bioaerosols emissions to Large scale impacts (2024-2028)

Amazonia is a living laboratory to study critical processes that regulate tropical atmospheric chemistry and physics and influence climate regionally and globally. Long-term observations and process studies are essential to unveil the fate of the Amazonian Forest. We plan to advance science over critically important processes that influence the hydrological cycle, radiation balance, reactive and greenhouse trace gas exchanges, bioaerosols, and the functioning of the Amazonian ecosystem. This will be done through a combination of different components in this project. There will be improvements of the ATTO tower long-term continuous measurements and new instrumentation at the Campina site, with the addition of new aerosol and trace gas studies, such as using the newly installed automatic elevator (RoLi system) that will allow continuous day and night vertical profiles from the ground up to 325 meters. We will also be extending the ATTO measurements to large-scale basin-wide Amazonian, through extensive ship cruises along the Solimões, Negro, and Amazonas rivers. Our studies will perform data analysis of the CAFÉ-Brazil experiment, with the HALO plane flying up to 14 km, detailed biological primary aerosol particle measurements basin-wide, with fluorescence detection of bacteria, fungal spores, plant debris, and other types of bioaerosols, and integrate large-scale greenhouse gas measurements, such as CO2 and CH4, including isotopic determination, trough ship cruises and towers sites along Amazonia. Finally, we will implement a modeling component integrated with basin-wide remote sensing measurements to help generalize basin-wide properties from fixed point measurements and ship campaigns, improving process understanding. We plan to unveil the complex trace gases-cloud-aerosol-precipitation interactions with these innovative measurements, more complete datasets, and associated modeling efforts. We will also study the feedback between the biosphere and atmosphere with human activities through deforestation and biomass burning emissions. We expect that these measurements and modeling framework will provide new insights into critical processes that regulate tropical atmospheric chemistry, cloud physics, climate, and the integrated functioning of tropical forests.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the Amazon, data analytics, and service system (2020-2023)*

Temperature, solar radiation, cloud cover, water vapor, large-scale meteorology, and human impacts are mainly responsible for the changes in GHG flows in the Amazon. It is essential to understand the non-linear and complex relationship between these variables. Changes in land use, especially deforestation, are responsible for the largest GHG emissions in Brazil. In 2020, about 11,088 km² of primary forests were deforested according to INPE’s PRODES system. This project aims to quantify GHG sources and sinks in the Amazon and the drivers that control the carbon balance, with a focus on CO2 and CH4. Integrating several existing tools, the project aims to develop new knowledge about the processes that control the GHG balance in Amazon. That includes the integration of new remote sensing data systems and technologies such as NASA and EU satellite measurements, such as OCO-2, GOSAT, ESA’s Sentinel satellite constellation (European Space Agency), TROPOMI among others. The LBA experiment (Large Scale Biosphere and Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon) and ATTO tower (Amazon Tall Tower Observatory) are operating several towers in Amazon measuring GHG concentrations and fluxes at the forest level. Data generated by them will be integrated with INPE products for deforestation, biomass burning, and forest degradation, such as PRODES (Monitoring System for Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon Forest by Satellite), DETER (Deforestation Detection System in Real-Time), Queimadas Project, TREES, among others. Using the MapBiomas platform, we will incorporate data on GHG emissions and removals from the forest and changes in land use in the Amazon at high resolution, allowing for comprehensive territorial analyses based on deforestation and land-use change patterns. A multidisciplinary data analysis system will be developed based on Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Science, facilitating the complex and multidimensional visualization of the generated data and its sharing. Management will be based on the analysis of service systems and managed by the project team. Finally, the group will explore automation techniques for data collection in the Amazon rainforest and remote sensing using robotic devices.

Synergistic effects of climate change and land use on carbon source and sink of Amazon forest ecosystem (2023-2025)

The Amazon Basin has the largest tropical rainforest on Earth, storing about 15% of the total global biomass carbon pool. The Amazon forests remove 0.4 Pg C per year from the atmosphere, about 4% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions each year. Evapotranspiration by the Amazon forest provides a steady flow of water vapor to the atmosphere, acting as a major water vapor source at global scale. It is clear that the Amazon rainforest plays a key role in the regional and global climate system by regulating the carbon cycle and atmospheric moisture circulation. However, driven by humnan activities and climate change, the Amazonian deforestation not only threatens the susteinable development of the region, but also may exacerbate the global climate crysis. That poses a chalenge to the climate change mitigation goal under the Paris Agreement. Here, we propose to utilize extensive remote sensing data and ground based observations, with the application of multi-scale Earth system and ecological process models aiming to (1) Explore the climate feedbacks of land use and its contribution to climate extremes in Amazonia; (2) Estimate carbon sources and sinks, and investigate the climate and land use processes that control carbon fluxes in Amazonia; and (3) Project future changes in carbon source and sink of the rainforest ecosystem under different climate change and land use scenarios in the future. The results of this project will support the design of possible pathways and adaptation strategies to address climate change and protect rainforests through sustainable land use and management. This research is jointly proposed by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and it will provide scientific support for policy making and achievement of sustainable use and management of tropical forest ecosystems (SDG15) and actions taken to mitigate climate change (SDG13) in the framework of United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG).