Western Bahia, Brazil, is a classic example of a region where intense irrigation growth has led to acute water stress situations in a few small basins. The water stress problem has the potential to grow regionally. However, there are currently no systematic field measurements of water withdrawn from rivers or groundwater to supply irrigation systems. In this work, we merge remote sensing and river gauge data to assess both the amount of water used for irrigation in Western Bahia and also its consequences for regional water stress, identifying water conflict situations and assessing water security. Remote sensing products used include time series of the normalized difference vegetation index, evapotranspiration, and rainfall. Field data include time series of river discharge and calibration data for crop status and actual evapotranspiration. From calibrated remote sensing products, three-day water balances were calculated for each center pivot using computations of irrigation depth and water uptake for irrigation, both individually at the center-pivot scale and integrated regionally. From these regional integrations, a simple water-use diagnostic indicated that three sub-basins presented the most critical conditions for water conflicts. An in-depth analysis of these sub-basins shows that, despite the high water stress, water use for irrigation has been steadily increasing, pushing the water use to its limits. This work demonstrates that the use of remote sensing products together with field data is a powerful tool for diagnosing water conflict situations. The limitations of this work relate to the absence of field data to validate the water uptake estimated and to the lack of additional long-term and high-quality river flow stations to provide diagnostics for all small basins in the region.

The wide adoption of highly productive soy–maize double cropping has allowed Brazil to become one of the main producers and exporters of these commodities. However, land cover and climate change could affect the viability of double cropping due to a shortening of the rainy season, and both crops could be affected. The goals of this study were to evaluate if adaptation measures such as adoption of shorter-cycle cultivars and delaying sowing dates are effective to maintain soybean and maize yield in the main producing regions in Brazil. We used a crop model and four climate models to simulate double cropping in two climate scenarios that differ in Amazonia and Cerrado deforestation levels. We tested if 10 soybean and 17 maize sowing dates and three cultivar combination could reduce the impacts of a shorter rainy season in double cropping yield and gross revenue. Results showed a decrease in maize yield due to a delay of soybean sowing dates and rainfall reduction during the growing season. Adaptation through delaying sowing dates and the adoption of short cycle cultivars was not effective to maintain system revenue in all the study regions in a scenario with high deforestation levels.

This study investigated the influence of large slaughterhouses on five variables, two related to environment impact (land use change rate and greenhouse gases emissions (GE)), and three related to cattle-ranching intensification (protein from crops, calories from crops and stocking rate). In Amazonia, the results show a reduction of the land use change rate and GE in zones both with and without the influence of large slaughterhouses. The hypothesis that slaughterhouses are leverage points to reduce deforestation in the biome was not confirmed. The slaughterhouses also seem to have no effect on cattle ranching intensification, as protein and calories production increased significantly in both zones, while the stocking rates did not change in the influence zones. In the Cerrado, cattle-ranching intensification is a reality, and is occurring independently of the presence of large slaughterhouses. In conclusion, the results show no evidence that large slaughterhouses have promoted either cattle-ranching intensification or improvements in the sustainability of the cattle-ranching activity in Amazonia and the Cerrado.