Banca de DEFESA: Vinicius de Freitas Silgueiro

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
DISCENTE : Vinicius de Freitas Silgueiro
DATA : 16/09/2025
HORA: 15:00
LOCAL: Cáceres
TÍTULO:

Biocultural corridor in the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve: characterization, occurrence of wildfires and a territorial management approach.

PALAVRAS-CHAVES:

wildfires, land use change, climate change, wetlands, Pantanal.

 

PÁGINAS: 74
GRANDE ÁREA: Ciências Biológicas
ÁREA: Ecologia
SUBÁREA: Ecologia de Ecossistemas
RESUMO:

This paper characterizes a biocultural corridor influenced by the Cuiaá and Paraguay rivers in the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve (RBPA) in Mato Grosso, as presented in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 highlights the fires that occurred in this corridor between 2020 and 2024. The final considerations address the potential of this biocultural corridor for strategic and shared management of the challenges faced and solutions implemented in the region. The RBPA is of global importance, encompassing the largest continuous wetland on the planet. The RBPA designation, conferred by UNESCO, aims to ensure the conservation and use of biodiversity in regions of great ecological, economic, and social value worldwide. In Mato Grosso, more than 90% of the RBPA is located within the Upper Paraguay Basin (BAP), bordered by plateaus and mountain ranges, with the Pantanal floodplain to the west. While representing a territory of extreme importance for biological diversity and hydrological regime, the Pantanal also boasts unparalleled richness and sociocultural complexity. This occupation is not only a record of human presence in the Pantanal, but also a testament to these peoples' ability to adapt and coexist with the region's natural dynamics, where traditional knowledge and cultural practices play an essential role in maintaining biodiversity and the sustainable management of natural resources. The historical socio-environmental context in the Pantanal is complex, challenging, and permeated by conflicts related to land use and occupation, with highlights including disputes over land and water, impacts from hydroelectric and mining projects, deforestation, fires, and the abusive use of pesticides resulting from agricultural practices. In recent years, especially between 2020 and 2024, fires devastated almost half of the entire Pantanal biome. In contexts such as this, of high environmental heterogeneity and cultural diversity, studies and initiatives have highlighted the potential of the biocultural corridor approach. A biocultural corridor can be defined as a region where nature and culture are intrinsically linked. The proposal to develop a territorial planning and management strategy with a special emphasis on biocultural corridors as a safeguard for the common assets of nature and communities could be a successful step toward conserving this region of the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve. Delimiting the territorial boundaries of this biocultural corridor could be complemented by participatory and social mapping, in a dynamic process that seeks to build consensus and solutions that benefit both biodiversity and sociodiversity. The results showed that the corridor covers 4.9 million hectares and connects five geomorphological units: plateaus, terraces, depressions, floodplains, and mountains. It is located within the Paraguay Hydrological Unit, encompassing part of the Paraguay River and a large portion of the Cuiabá River, with its headwaters, in the Cerrado biome. Mapping of priority areas for biodiversity conservation revealed areas of very high and extremely high conservation importance, including four types of sites recognized by UNESCO: a Biosphere Reserve, three Ramsar sites, a World Heritage Site, and a proposed Chapada dos Guimarães Geopark. Consequently, the region has thirty Conservation Units. From a cultural perspective, the region is occupied by indigenous peoples, the Bororo and Guató ethnic groups, quilombolas, traditional communities, and family farmers. Driving forces in the RBPA, such as large-scale agriculture and livestock farming, mining, hydroelectric dams, and land speculation, have created pressures such as deforestation, fires, pesticide contamination, mercury, and river silting. The biocultural corridor arc, influenced by the Cuiabá and Paraguay rivers, in the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve, presents a complex geomorphological configuration resulting in ecosystem diversity that supports a rich biodiversity and, at the same time, provides the basis for the subsistence, knowledge, and cultural identity of the traditional peoples and communities present in this corridor, making the conservation of these geomorphological landscapes a biocultural imperative. The fires from 2020 to 2024 impacted 4 million hectares in this corridor, with 56% of its area burning at least once during this period. The average annual area affected by fires during this period was 808,000 hectares, which is equivalent to 16.5% of the total area of the biocultural corridor (4 million hectares) being affected annually by fires and fires. The category with the highest incidence of fires was registered private rural properties, where practically 60% of the areas affected by fires occurred from 2020 to 2024. Conservation units were the second most affected by fires in the biocultural corridor from 2020 to 2024 (22.97%). The impacts on the population living in rural settlements and indigenous lands, as well as in urbanized areas within the biocultural corridor, were enormous. 92.1% of the burned area was naturally occurring, including forest formations (22.88%), savannahs (25.18%), grasslands (22.07%), flooded fields and marshes (17.22%), and vegetation in watercourses and lakes that have dried up (4.61%). The remaining 7.9% affected were areas of anthropogenic use, mainly occupied by pastures (6.74%). The scenario of areas affected by fire in recent years in this biocultural corridor represents the current urgency for prevention and mitigation actions against the occurrence of fires. These actions must be strategically coordinated and implemented in an integrated manner by various actors. In the context of the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve, by focusing on a smaller set of municipalities or sub-basins, biocultural corridors become more manageable, participatory, and efficient, facilitating the integration of environmental conservation and cultural appreciation in the daily lives of the people who live and care for these territories. This approach can enhance extremely promising practices for fire management in the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve, especially given the intensification of droughts and the increase in fire occurrences. We therefore emphasize the implementation of biocultural corridors as a strategy to protect the Pantanal from devastation by fires, by recognizing and integrating the communities' ancestral knowledge and practices into the management of the biome.

MEMBROS DA BANCA:
Presidente - 84207007 - CAROLINA JOANA DA SILVA
Interno - 66972005 - JOSUE RIBEIRO DA SILVA NUNES
Externo à Instituição - DAMIEN ARVOR - CNRS