Trade-Offs between Land Management and Regional Climate in the Brazilian Cerrado

Examining interactions between large‐scale land use change and regional climate in areas undergoing dramatic agricultural transformations, like the Brazilian Cerrado, is crucial for understanding tradeoffs between human needs and ecosystem services. Previous work has demonstrated that clearing vegetation in the Cerrado and replacing it with large-scale mechanized agriculture (often soy, corn and sugarcane fields) affects regional water and energy balances. Moreover, farmers in the region depend on a stable, predictable rainy season to cultivate crops like soy and corn, but, clearing Cerrado for agriculture may disturb regional climate and affect precipitation: replacing the deep-rooted vegetation of the Cerrado with soy fields increases local temperatures and decreases evapotranspiration rates, particularly during the transition period between the dry and wet season. Here, we integrate accurate high-resolution land-cover maps into the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled to the Noah‐Multiparameterization (Noah‐MP) land surface model to run simulations over Brazil’s agricultural heartland to determine the extent to which changes in land-use and land-cover have affected regional climate focusing on the crucial dry-to-wet season transition months.