Best Management Practices (BMP's)

Centro de Pesquisas do Pantanal - CPP and Florida Center for Environmental Studies - CES are planning a Brazilian version of CES Agro-Ecology Conference for 2003 in Mato Grosso.

The theme might be the challenge of  changing eroded spots into productive agriculture areas, changing an environmental problem into economical development.  According to Mato Grosso Federation of Agriculture - FAMATO, about 5 million hectares of " cerrado"  land is eroded in the State. Erosion is responsible for sedimentation and Pantanal filling. 

• Len Berry, CES - Florida Center for Environmental Studies 
• Paulo Teixeira, CPP - Center for Pantanal Research 
• Pierre Girard, CPP 
• Alberto J. Palombo, CATHALAC - Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean 
• Chip Swindell, HEC - HydroEnvironment Company 
• Dave Tazik, Environmental Laboratory of the Corps of Engineers' R&D Center (Vicksburg) 
• Rose Santos, representing Amado de Oliveira Filho, IMEA/FAMATO (Instituto Matogrossense de Economia Agrícola/Federação da Agricultura do Estado de Mato Grosso) 
• Alexander Estermann, APAPI's technical director (Associação de Produtores e Amigos do Pantanal de Itiquira)
• Antonio R. Ioris, Water Resources Agenda Manager, Pantanal Program
• William Liu, Professor, Catholic University Dom Bosco (UCDB)

If you wish to participate, please Contact Us.  

WHEN: the Agro-Ecology Conference in the Pantanal would be scheduled for the second half of 2003, if the Committee agrees. It would give us some time to negotiate sponsors for the proposal. 

WHO: So far we have the following: Carlos Alberto Passos (College of Forest Engineering, UFMT - Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso) would be the coordinator of the proposal for CPP in Pantanal Region side. Maria Zinato (EPI) would be the contact between CES and CPP, to - let's say - "transfer" the methodology. Both would write the proposal to present to the Advisory Committee for discussion, approval and sponsor negotiation. 

THEME: There is a strong suggestion from FAMATO-MT, that the first conference focuses an extremely important issue for many stakeholders in any Upper Paraguay River Basin: eroded, degraded areas. The challenge would be how to recuperate those areas to become productive agricultural areas. Rose and I are putting together some numbers to show the significance of this research/project. Changing a problem into an increase of production might be a good start to solve water sedimentation problems in all basins in Pantanal region. 

PURPOSE: The output of the Conference, besides the proceedings, must be the designation of a team that will work in a prototype area for restoration/recuperation, in Itiquira Basin. This basin is a relatively small watershed for the Pantanal scale,
but it is typical in the sense that it contains a bit of each problem of other basins in Upper Paraguay River Basin (mining activities, urban settlement, agricultural runoff, hydroeletrical plant -ITISA, Itiquira wetland or Pantanal de Itiquira) and where
sedimentation is a key problem not only for the Pantanal but also to APAPI and ITISA. For these reasons, Itiquira river basin could be seen as a “laboratory”, where parameters would be more or less under control and could be easily measured