Pecaries in pantanal landscape
Photo: Sandra Cavalcanti
The Pantanal of central-western Brazil , eastern Bolivia , and northeastern Paraguay is a huge (210,000 km2, i.e., areas of Belgium , Netherlands , Switzerland , and Portugal combined) alluvial plain that drains the headwaters and tributaries of the Upper Paraguay River (Figure1). It encompasses a complex mixture of tropical forest, savanna, and aquatic environments adapted to a highly variable annual flood that may last as long as six months and cover as much as 110,000 km2.
Figure 1.
Upper Paraguay (light green) and Pantanal (dark green).
The Pantanal provides important ecosystem services for the region, including sequestration of CO2 by forests, regulation of the rainfall regime and river flows, purification of water by wetlands, and delivery of nutrients and sediments to flood plains.
It supports a highly productive and diverse assemblage of neotropical flora and fauna, including high-density populations of a variety of freshwater fishes and migratory wading birds, as well as hyacinth macaws, capybaras, caiman, tapir, white-lipped peccaries, and jaguar. The Pantanal was designated by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve and is considered one of the most well-preserved biomes in South America.
However, because more than 95% of the Brazilian portion (70% of total Pantanal) and the highlands that surround the region consist of private properties, the Pantanal has been vulnerable to recent economic trends that have driven large-scale deforestation and agricultural development. On the highland plateaus that drain into the Pantanal, nearly 60% of the cerrado forests have been cleared and converted to cash crops (e.g., soy, corn, and cotton) or exotic (non-native) pasturelands during the last 50 years. These cerrado forest formations (i.e., savanna forests typical of seasonal plateau regions) comprised the second largest forest biome in Brazil (after the Amazon), but are currently threatened, since 55% of their original 2,000,000 km2 have been converted to agriculture during the last 35 years.
The decline in regional CO2 sequestration because of cleared forests and the release of CO2 from decaying trees are serious long- and short-term consequences of deforestation, both in the highlands and on the flood plain. Exacerbating increased CO2 releases in the region is the current demand by the Brazilian steel industry for charcoal fuel, which is produced from downed trees near deforestation sites. As demand has increased from the steel industry, charcoal producers have lowered the costs of deforestation, stimulating additional habitat destruction by short-sighted ranch owners.
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