This book offers a panorama of recent scientific achievements produced through the framework of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere programme (LBA) and other research programmes in the Brazilian Amazon. The content is highly interdisciplinary, with an overarching aim to contribute to the understanding of the dynamic biophysical and societal/socio-economic structure and functioning of Amazonia as a regional entity and its regional and global climatic teleconnections. The target readership includes advanced undergraduate and post-graduate students and researchers seeking to untangle the gamut of interactions that the Amazon¿s complex biophysical and social system represent.

Interactions between biosphere, atmosphere and human land use in the Amazon Basin: an introduction.- Biogenic volatile organic compounds in Amazonian forest ecosystems.- The hydrology and energy balance of the Amazon Basin.- Extreme seasonal climate variations in the Amazon basin: droughts and floods.- The Amazon carbon balance: an evaluation of methods and results.- Climate and the Amazonian carbon balance.- Aquatic ecosystems.- Ecosystem-atmosphere exchanges of CO2 in dense and open 'terra firme' rain forests in Amazonia.- Overview of forest carbon stocks study in Amazonas State, Brazil.- Recent changes in Amazon forest biomass and dynamics.- The biogeochemistry of the main forest vegetation types in Amazonia.- Soil - vegetation interactions in Amazonia.- Fires in Amazonia.- Modelling Amazonian carbon budgets and vegetation dynamics in a changing climate.- Land use, land cover and land use change in the Brazilian Legal Amazon (1960-2013).- The impact of land use on carbon stocks and fluxes in Brazilian Amazonia: Implications for policy.- An Amazonian forest and its fragments as a laboratory of global change.- The socio-ecological implications of land use and landscape change in the Brazilian Amazon.- Amazonia in perspective as a changing environment.