TITLE:
Assessing the Influence of Climate Extremes on Ecosystems and Human Health in Southwestern Amazon Supported by the PULSE-Brazil Platform
AUTHORS:
L. E. O. C. Aragão, J. A. Marengo, P. M. Cox, R. A. Betts, D. Costa, N. Kaye, L. Alves, L. T. Smith, I. F. A. Cavalcanti, G. Sampaio, L. O. Anderson, M. Horta, S. Hacon, V. L. Reis, P. A. M. Fonseca, I. F. Brown
KEYWORDS:
Amazon, Droughts, Human Health, Fire, Climate Change, Vulnerability, Adaptation, Natural Hazard
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.5 No.3,
September
6,
2016
ABSTRACT: The complexity of multi-dimensional climate, environmental and human health information complicates bringing together scientists, civil society, and decision makers to provide adequate mitigation and adaptation options for the consequences of global environmental change. To provide an effective pathway to conciliate (integrate) these datasets, we present PULSE-Brazil as the Platform for Understanding Long-term Sustainability of Ecosystems and human health. The overarching aim of this paper is to focus on two study cases in the Brazilian state of Acre, 1) analyzing recent socio-environmental disasters such as the impacts of droughts and consequent increases in fire detections on the incidence of respiratory diseases, and 2) evaluating the impacts of temperature increases in combination with rainfall seasonality upon the incidence of Dengue fever. Based on data available in PULSE-Brazil platform, we also aim to provide insights on the consequences of future climate variability on ecosystems and human health. Finally, we provide a discussion on the collaborative process between scientists and policymakers that defined the PULSE-Brazil platform specifications and datasets and propose a conceptual pathway for promoting the interaction between science and policy during the process of producing a tool that allows the understating of climate-relate processes. Our results clearly demonstrated that ecosystems are under increased fire risk in the future that will, in turn, affect the health of human populations. Moreover, humans are also exposed to critical Dengue fever outbreaks with the projected increase in minimum temperatures. Therefore, minimizing the impacts of these potentially ascending socio-environmental problems is the first step for adapting to a changing climate in the Amazon region. We expect that PULSE-Brazil will serve not only as a technical tool for supporting governance, management, mitigation and long-term adaptation plans for climate impacts and natural disasters, but also will take advantage of its graphical capabilities to be an instructive vehicle that facilitates information flow for societal governance.