Abstract
In the Tapajós River, Brazilian Amazon, fishing is an important activity, especially for low-income riverine populations. Unfortunately, the Tapajós River fish diversity and abundance are threatened by several anthropogenic drivers, including deforestation and overfishing. We modeled the lower Tapajós River's food web and simulated changes in biomass compartments as a response to increases in deforestation (loss of floodplain forest habitat) and on artisanal fishing pressure over 30 years. According to our simulations, the large-bodied species could be reduced drastically while small-bodied and fast-growing species could be favored by fishing effort increasing. The loss of floodplain forest is expected to cause a general decline (23%) of the total standing fish biomass. This reduction could reflect greater losses on species that are directly dependent on resources from the floodplain forests, such as fruits and seeds. These results indicated that the food web of the lower Tapajós River is structurally characterized by bottom-up control, through the use of basal resources, such as detritus (mostly from decomposing plants), fruits, seeds, terrestrial, and aquatic invertebrates. Furthermore, the simulations’ results highlight that the protection of the floodplain forest through the existing protected areas will be of essential importance in the future to maintain fish biomass, sustainable artisanal fishing, and improve the food security of Amazonian riverine inhabitants.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to S. Camiz, G. V. Canziani, J. N. de Araujo, J. A. C. Vasquez, J. T. da Silva, and P. P. Nitschke for providing valuable information and advice needed to build the model. This work is dedicated to the memory of Graziella Zanoli. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers.
Funding
This work was part of L.C.’s master’s degree thesis, and it was financed by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior-Brazil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001, through the research project Procad/Novas Fronteiras (NF 883/2010). Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) provided research grant to R.A.M.S. (grant 303393/2019-0).
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Supplementary information
Supplementary Material 1
Data sources used to build the Tapajós River’s food web model, landings, and diet composition matrix of species/groups (DOCX 383 kb)
Supplementary Material 2
Balancing and evaluation for Tapajós River Ecopath model: ecological and thermodynamic rules, PREBAL diagnostics, Pedigree index, parameter estimates, and keystone species index (DOCX 418 kb)
Supplementary Material 3
Outputs of the Tapajós River Ecopath model: food web diagram. Details of the Ecosim module, population count raw data, annual deforestation rate raw data, and temporal dynamic simulations for fish species/groups not included in the Results section (DOCX 4552 kb)
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Capitani, L., Angelini, R., Keppeler, F.W. et al. Food web modeling indicates the potential impacts of increasing deforestation and fishing pressure in the Tapajós River, Brazilian Amazon. Reg Environ Change 21, 42 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01777-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01777-z