This study's overarching aim is to establish the areal extent and characteristics of the rapid sugarcane expansion and land use change in Sã o Paulo state (Brazil) as a result of an increase in the demand for ethanol, using Landsat type remotely sensed data. In 2003 flex fuel automobiles started to enter the Brazilian consumer market causing a dramatic expansion of sugarcane areas from 2.57 million ha in 2003 to 4.45 million ha in 2008. Almost all the land use change, for the sugarcane expansion of crop year 2008/09, occurred on pasture and annual crop land, being equally distributed on each. It was also observed that during the 2008 harvest season, the burned sugarcane area was reduced to 50% of the total harvested area in response to a protocol that aims to cease sugarcane straw burning practice by 2014 for mechanized areas. This study indicates that remote sensing images have efficiently evaluated important characteristics of the sugarcane cultivation dynamic providing quantitative results that are relevant to the debate of sustainable ethanol production from sugarcane in Brazil.

The Soy Moratorium is a pledge agreed to by major soybean companies not to trade soybean produced in deforested areas after 24th July 2006 in the Brazilian Amazon biome. The present study aims to identify soybean planting in these areas using the MOD13Q1 product and TM/Landsat-5 images followed by aerial survey and field inspection. In the 2009/2010 crop year, 6.3 thousand ha of soybean (0.25% of the total deforestation) were identified in areas deforested during the moratorium period. The use of remote sensing satellite images reduced by almost 80% the need for aerial survey to identify soybean planting and allowed monitoring of all deforested areas greater than 25 ha. It is still premature to attribute the recent low deforestation rates in the Amazon biome to the Soy Moratorium, but the initiative has certainly exerted an inhibitory effect on the soybean frontier expansion in this biome.Remote Sens. 2011, 3 186

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A method for the quantitative evaluation of kinetic constants in Ziegler–Natta and metallocene olefin homopolymerizations presented previously (V. Matos, A. G. M. Neto, J. C. Pinto, J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2001, 79, 2076; V. Matos, A. G. M. Neto, M. Nele, J. C. Pinto, J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2002, 86, 3226) is extended to allow for estimation of model parameters in copolymerization reactions. The method is used to estimate kinetic parameters of ethylene/propylene copolymerization during the synthesis of high impact poly(propylene) in a train of cascade reactors. Process models were developed to describe the reaction rate profile, reactor solubles, molecular weight distribution of the total polymer, xylene solubles, and insoluble polymer. The process models and the estimated parameters were inserted into a process simulator that successfully described the industrial process.

Hyperspectral crop reflectance data are useful for several remote sensing applications in agriculture, but there is still a need for studies to define optimal wavebands to estimate crop biophysical parameters. The objective of this work is to analyze the use of narrow and broad band vegetation indices (VI) derived from hyperspectral field reflectance measurements to estimate wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grain yield and plant height. A field study was conducted during the winter growing season of 2003 in Campinas, São Paulo State, Brazil. Field canopy reflectance measurements were acquired at six wheat growth stages over 80 plots with four wheat cultivars (IAC-362, IAC-364, IAC-370, and IAC-373), five levels of nitrogen fertilizer (0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 kg of N ha-1) and four replicates. The following VI were analyzed: a) hyperspectral or narrow-band VI (1. optimum multiple narrow-band reflectance, OMNBR; 2. narrow-band normalized difference vegetation index, NB_NDVI; 3. first- and second-order derivative of reflectance; and 4. four derivative green vegetation index); and b) broad band VI (simple ratio, SR; normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI; and soil-adjusted vegetation index, SAVI). Hyperspectral indices provided an overall better estimate of biophysical variables when compared to broad band VI. The OMNBR with four bands presented the highest R² values to estimate both grain yield (R² = 0.74; Booting and Heading stages) and plant height (R² = 0.68; Heading stage). Best results to estimate biophysical variables were observed for spectral measurements acquired between Tillering II and Heading stages.