The Brazilian savannas, called Cerrado, are one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. It is also the most threatened biome in Brazil. The demand for land continues to grow, and thus, the pressure on the remaining intact areas is imminent. Conversely, there are areas experiencing regeneration after land conversion, and now show secondary vegetation formations. My aims are the following: construct woody species distribution maps within the Cerrado using MaxEnt software; use these distributions to predict which species and areas are most threatened by the contemporary sugarcane expansion; characterize the species composition, biomass, and greenhouse gases emissions of secondary vegetation in the Cerrado; estimate the amount of N2O from sugarcane crop fields and compare to the native Cerrado areas.
