We want to develop an integrated network of permanent plots in Brazil that can monitor forest biodiversity and carbon fluxes through the 21st century in which its natural systems will be increasingly stressed and challenged by climate change. This project will take an important step towards this ambitious goal. Amazonia is vast, so conducting even basic research is challenging. Monitoring ecosystems here requires scientific leadership, vision, and large networks in which researchers apply standardised techniques on-the-ground at many locations. Training must be integrated into the research process to create capacity and assure long-term continuity of monitoring. This project will build on the successes of the pan-Amazon forest monitoring network (RAINFOR- Rede Amazônica de Inventários Florestais- led by Phillips) by linking with the leading pan-Brazilian biodiversity monitoring network (PPBio). RAINFOR works with 400 permanent plots and has made several major scientific discoveries in Amazonia and developed unique software ("ForestPlots.net") to help tropical partners analyse plot data. But due to poor plot coverage in Brazil, RAINFOR cannot yet provide good estimates of forest carbon balance and dynamics fluxes in Brazil. Meanwhile, PPBio has developed a unique biodiversity assessment protocol and applied it across Brazil with more than 30 institutional partners. However few plots - almost all from one site - have been re-measured for vegetation change. The proposal therefore takes a step towards addressing the needs of both partners. Together we will (1) share techniques and train local participants, (2) recensus 30 PPBio plots in a huge spatial gap, and (3) train young scientists to process, share, and analyse the data using the global protocols of ForestPlots.net. In detail, we plan to: 1. Conduct a hands-on field course to prepare teams to conduct forest monitoring. This will be based in a rural community where PPBio has already invested in plots. The course will teach skills for plant collection, identification and measurement. Young rural community participants will work with ecologists from Brazil and UK. This provides an opportunity to experiment with forest monitoring - sharing protocols, identifying capacities and leaders, and training in technical data collection skills. Key participants will also be involved in the main fieldwork phase (activity 2), and in the data management and analysis workshop (activity 3), with the project helping provide marginalised rural people with new skills. 2. Remeasure 30 plots along the BR-319 road from Manaus to Porto Velho. BR-319 cuts an 850km transect through the least known forests in Amazonia, a true 'black hole' for biogeochemical and biodiversity science. PPBio has established a series of 111 plots along this road. This project will undertake the first recensuses of plots along this transect, providing the first information on forest dynamics and carbon fluxes from the heart of Brazil's Amazon. 3. Joint workshop to train participants in data management and analysis. We will use ForestPlots.net to help partners manage and analyse information from their plots. The workshop will include scientists, students, and rural people from Amazonian Brazil, lasting 8 days plus one rest day. Biodiversity and forest dynamics data will be integrated into ForestPlots.net, to ensure that PPBio data are carefully checked and comparable internationally. Analysis will involve training in the calculations of carbon stock, carbon balance, vegetation dynamics, biodiversity, and interpreting the rich information on useful Amazon forest species within ForestPlots.net, using an R-package which RAINFOR has developed with NERC support. In turn, participants will feedback and educate the RAINFOR/ForestPlots.net team to determine specific user requirements to make information in the future more accessible, interpretable, and useful for forest researchers, forest dwellers, and forest users.

Seeds are the natural means of species regeneration, the product of pollinator activity, the basis of agriculture, a type of non-woody product and a source of essential protein and vegetable fat (seed oil) with many potential uses (industrial oils, biofuels, cosmetics). Consequently they are one of the mainstays of continuing ecosystem services. The Amazon is one of the most biodiverse regions of the world and the forests near Manaus are considered priority conservation areas. Therefore, ecological research in the region is fundamentally important to the sustainable and innovative use of species and yet the scientific capacity in seed biology in the Amazon region is extremely limited. BESANS will train 20 members of the Amazon Seed Network or students, 9 staff and up to 60 seed/seedling producers in Amazonian species seed biology, and upskilling in conservation biology. The partnership is sector specific, linking plant science institutes and aiming to understanding the seed supply chain (seed development, yield, processing and storage) associated with the nascent seed trade in the Amazonas. Research on seed biology is critical to accessing species for various development activities (food/energy security, ability to mitigate/adapt to climate change) and the collection and conservation of germplasm, the sustainable exploitation of biodiversity and restoration of degraded land are key objectives of the Ministry of the Environment (MMA) and INCRA (National Institute for Agrarian Reform). We will ensure the development outcome of a much more functional Amazon Native Seed Centre in Manaus, better able to provide high quality seeds of more species for various industries.

Amazon forests process and store large quantities of carbon in vegetation and soils. These forests, assumed to be mostly 'old-growth' and fire-free are exhibiting a remarkable feature-they are gaining the equivalent mass of a small car every year in aboveground biomass per hectare of forest (0.89 Mg/ha/yr). These gains are attributed to increasing atmospheric CO2, which has a fertilization effect on tree growth. However, fire in these 'old-growth' forests may be more recent than expected (in the last few centuries), and regrowth from fire together with soil charcoal-which has a fertility effect-may be contributing together with CO2 fertilisation to the observed increases in biomass in these apparently mature forests. Current understanding of drivers of these increases is limited by, (i) an unknown fire history of plots used to monitor change, and (ii) lack of information of how resource change affects these forests. The effects of pre-modern fire on forest regrowth and the gain have not been evaluated. Our pilot analysis of radiocarbon dated fire from soil charcoal indicates that even the wettest Amazon rainforest has burned, with forests considered to be 'old-growth' having burned within the last few centuries, and 70% of plots (n=70) containing visible soil charcoal fragments. Periodic drier climate and fire use by Native Americans before their populations collapsed ~450 years ago following Europeans colonisation may have resulted in a higher fire frequency than currently observed. Forest regrowth from these and more recent fires may still be occurring in forests considered to be 'undisturbed', e.g., some trees may grow to be 980 years old in central Amazonia, so that forest considered 'old-growth' may still be approaching equilibrium as long-lived trees mature following fire. Fire also produces soil pyrogenic carbon (PyC) as charcoal that is found in archaeological sites in terra preta soils and in upland soils across Amazonia far from evidence of human settlement. Soil PyC increases soil fertility on otherwise nutrient poor soils, and being resistant to decomposition, may have increased soil fertility across the Amazon. Pre-modern fire and soil PyC are therefore two important ingredients in understanding how Amazonian forests currently function. We will determine whether regrowth following past fire and soil PyC fertility effects in 'old-growth' permanent forest plots across Amazonia contributes to the observed carbon sink. We have developed a basin-wide network of on-the-ground sample plots, and because methods of measuring the forest with these are fully standardised even across nations they represent an excellent opportunity to measure the response of Amazon forest to historic fire and soil PyC. In permanent forest plots across the Amazon Basin our Objectives are: 1) determine spatial patterns in 'time since last fire'; 2) determine soil PyC stocks, and how these are affected by climatic, edaphic conditions, and fire intensity; 3) using results from (1) and (2), determine whether spatial patterns of productivity and carbon gains in aboveground tropical forest trees in Amazonia are consistent with regrowth from historical fire disturbance and by soil PyC acting as a soil fertility enhancer Our research will improve understanding of fire patterns across the Amazon for long-term forest plots (the same plots used to estimate the current carbon sink). We will provide a first quantification of: soil PyC stocks, basin-wide environmental drivers of soil PyC stocks, and whether soil fertility is greater where soil PyC levels are higher. This will be a first large-scale test of whether forest productivity, structure, and increases in carbon can be attributed to regrowth from historic fire and soil PyC fertility effects. The results are vital for conservation planning, to estimate the longevity of the carbon sink, and for policy such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+).

Plant domestication and the development of agriculture began shortly after 10,000 years ago in the Americas and several other primary centres around the world, and was one of humankind's most pivotal achievements. Recent advances in palaeobotany and molecular genetics have opened new avenues for understanding when, where, how, and why this crucial change first came about. For example, phylogenetic and phylogeographic studies of extant populations can often identify the wild ancestral population and thus the geographic cradle of origin for each domesticate, pointing the archaeologists to a limited area for survey and excavation. A growing body of genetic, biogeographical, and archaeobotanical data has now established Amazonia as one of the most important centres of plant domestication in the world. Recent genetic and biogeographic studies show that the transitional fringe of seasonal forests and savannahs in SW Amazonia, which encompass the upper Madeira River Basin, were probably the cradle of the domestication of several major American crops, including manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanuts (Arachis hypogaea), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), coca (Erythroxylum coca), chilli peppers (Capsicum baccattum), annatto (Bixa orellana), and tobacco (Nicotina tabacco) (Clement et al. 2010; Piperno and Pearsall 1998). Despite being the most important centre of domestication in lowland South America, until now no interdisciplinary projects have documented the domestication of these important crops in their cradle of origin. To address this issue, we proposed to organise two workshops and conduct preliminary research activities to plan, write and submit a 3-5 yr international interdisciplinary project integrating molecular genetics, plant biogeography, archaeology, archaeobotany and paleoecology. The main objectives of the project will be to: i) investigate the history of major Amazonian crops including manioc, peach palm, chilli peppers and annatto; ii) reconstruct the context of early agriculture; and iii) investigate the timing and nature of human impact on the environment in the upper Madeira River, SW Amazonia. These objectives build on two previously separate lines of research coordinated by Iriarte and Clement: paleoecology and archaebotany of landscape transformations of the Araucaria forests of southern Brazil (AHRC-Fapesp) and the Purus-Madeira interfluve (ERC), and the origin, dispersal and phylogeography of native Amazonian crops (Fapeam, Fapeam-AIRD, CNPq, Fapesp), respectively. The project is well-timed to combine state-of-the-art techniques to address the complexity of plant domestication and the development of agriculture. Research on crop origins are benefiting from the refinement of microfossil botanical techniques, in particular starch granules retrieved from the residues of stone tools used to process plants, which are allowing archaeobotanists to document root crops in tropical regions exhibiting poor preservation of macrobotanical remains (visible remains of seeds and fruits) (Piperno 2011). Palaeoecological techniques will help reconstruct the Late Pleistocene through Holocene vegetation history of the upper Madeira River and, in particular, the natural environment and plant associations in which the first crops were domesticated. Particular emphasis will be given to how and when humans began to alter their environments, using fire history to reconstruct the relation between natural- and human-caused processes. Genetic analysis can identify the wild populations from which the first selections were derived to start the domestication of our modern crops, as well as to trace dispersals out of these centres of domestication.

Terrestrial ecosystems currently absorb one quarter of the carbon dioxide that Humankind releases into the atmosphere, thus reducing the rate of climate change. In this context, Amazon rainforest is extremely important, absorbing more than half a billion tonnes of carbon per year. This represents more than the combined emissions from the USA and China. However, we have limited understanding of how the productivity of Amazon forests is controlled, and this reduces our ability to predict what will happen in the future as atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise and the climate changes. One of the main paradigms in ecology is that the productivity of tropical ecosystems, which occur on old, highly-weathered soils, is limited by the availability of phosphorus. This contrasts with more temperate ecosystems whose productivity has been shown to be limited by nitrogen availability. However, the phosphorus paradigm has not been tested in detail as there have been very few nutrient manipulation studies in tropical forests, and no large-scale study has been carried out in Amazon forest. This is a major issue because soil nutrient availability in most of Amazonia is substantially lower than in Panama, the location of the only ongoing fertilisation experiment in tropical lowland rainforest. Thus, the Panama findings may not be representative of large areas of Amazonia, and, therefore, our understanding of the role soil fertility plays in controlling tropical forest productivity is incomplete. Testing the phosphorus paradigm in Amazonia is critical for two reasons. Firstly, eastern and central Amazonia, the area which contains the lowest fertility soils, is considered to be at risk from the adverse effects of climate change, with widespread dieback predicted by some scientists. The resilience of these forests is considered to be highly dependent on whether trees are able to increase their growth in response to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and this ability is likely to depend on the extent to which their growth is currently limited by soil nutrient availability. Secondly, there is growing evidence that the response of ecosystems to global change may differ depending on which nutrient limits their productivity. Therefore, establishing the first large-scale nutrient manipulation study in Amazonia should represent one of greatest priorities for ecosystem and climate change research. We will do just that, manipulating nitrogen, phosphorus and cation availability in central Amazon forest, at a site representative of the most common soil type in the Basin, and will quantify the response of key forest processes. We will determine the impacts on photosynthesis, plant respiration, biomass production and turnover, and decomposition, ultimately allowing us to take a full-ecosystem approach to establish how carbon storage has been affected. The new knowledge and understanding which we generate will be used to improve Amazon process representation in the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES). This will be the first time that multi-nutrient control of tropical forest function has been included in a dynamic global vegetation model, allowing for more realistic simulation of the response of the Amazon carbon cycle to environmental change. This will improve our ability to predict how the Amazon rainforest will change during the 21st century and what the implications will be for rates of regional and global climate change. In summary, our project will address a fundamental ecological question and will improve greatly our understanding of an issue that contributes substantially to uncertainty in predictions of rates of 21st century climate change; namely, how the productivity of one of the most important natural carbon sinks on the planet, the Amazon rainforest, is controlled.