Environmental systems (SA) have gained great visibility as mechanisms of environmental conservation and improvement of living conditions for rural communities. However, when compared to services of provision of food, fiber and energy, SAs such as carbon sequestration and water conservation are generally put in an inferior level. Given its importance even to the sustainability of agriculture, it is necessary that these SAs move from the sphere of discourse into the sphere of practical realities. This project aims to generate SA knowledge in agriculture as a means to promote productive socio-environmental sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon. The research's area will be the region under the influence of the BR-153 road (Cuiabá - Santarém) and BR-230 (Trans-Amazon), in the state of Pará, where there co-exist many different productive categories (family and industrial agriculture of grains and of extensive cattle farming). Initially, the categorization will deal with patterns of landscape fragmentation, which will be associated with socio-economic dynamics and types of productive system management. From this spatialization process and situational knowledge, productive systems will be selected in order to quantify the following environmental services: carbon sequestration, reduction in emission of green-house gases from the soil to the atmosphere, biodiversity conservation of soil and water. The goal is to determine how much these SAs vary as a function of the change in conventional uses of the soil to alternative forms. Three specific types of production systems will be considered: agro-forest systems, no-till farming, and intensive management of grasslands. Samples paired with both conventional and alternate systems will be selected for each system. Economic evaluations and market studies regarding environmental systems in agriculture and cattle farming will be done. Additionality sceneries of environmental services (such as increase in environmental services that would occur in the absence of management practices) will be prepared, and payment mechanisms will be investigated. Finally, all the results generated in the project will be integrated with focus on different modeling techniques (ecological economic, multi-agent and modeling of dynamic systems). The hopes are that this project will be able to gather elements to promote environmental services produced in the field of agriculture in order to promote sustainable development in rural communities.

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