Land use change scenarios and their effects on hydropower energy in the Amazon.

Accelerated changes in land use in the regions of the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado in the last four decades have raised questions about the possible consequences for the regional hydrology. Our study area is the Tocantins-Araguaia River Basin (TAW), focusing on the Tucuruí Hydropower Plant (THP), downstream of the TAW. In this study, we evaluated four scenarios of change in land use and cover for the TAW in which forest areas were replaced by pasture, then by agriculture, then by reforestation vegetation and, finally, by regenerated forest to investigate the impacts on the hydrological components of the basin and the hydropower potential of the THP according to these scenarios.