The tropical forests of Brazil’s Amazon play a critical role in the global carbon cycle. Climate change and large-scale land use and land cover changes have altered the region’s carbon balance, with potential impacts to the global climate as well as South America’s hydrological cycle. IREES, in collaboration with OU’s Center for Brazil Studies and School of Meteorology helped support two delegations of OU faculty to Brazil (July 2023 and May 2024) to engage international teams of scientists, state and national agencies with the goal of outlining joint research studies aimed at protecting and understanding threats to the Amazon rainforests. In 2023, professors Tim Filley, Xiangming Xiao, and Victor Maqque, visited Piracicaba, Sao Paulo to discuss opportunities for collaboration with the leadership of the Federal University of Sao Paulo’s School of Agriculture (ESALQ) and the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (CENA). This was continued in Santarem and Brasilia, joined by professors Otavio Costa Acevedo (SOM) and Fabio Costa Morais de sa Silva (CIS), for meetings in the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA) and a series of visits to the University of Brasilia, Ministries of Agriculture, Indigenous peoples, Education, USAID, WWF, EMBRAPA (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), and the Federal Government’s Research Institute for Applied Economics (IPEA) in the City of Brasilia. In 2024, Professor and CAGS Dean Petra Klein (SOM), with Professors Otavio Costa Acevedo (SOM), Victor Maqque, Xiangming Xiao, took part in a joint NASA/NSF workshop in Manaus, Brazil, on impacts of unusual weather events and climate anomalies on the Amazon rainforest, co-lead by Otavio Costa Acevedo.
