**2. An integrative knowledge for an integrative action**

Tropical forests influence the terrestrial climate system due to the exchanges of energy, water and carbon between the surface and the atmosphere. In addition to providing water vapour to the environment, influencing the atmospheric general circulation and contributing to regional precipitation, these ecosystems are important in the global carbon cycle [3, 4]. Consequently, deforestation in the tropics can result in changes on the availability of energy at the surface for the evaporative processes and in the amount of carbon released the atmosphere.

Recent research has shown that tropical forests are a system in biophysical transition [5, 6]. In order to understand the effects of this transition on the environment, and vice-versa, it is necessary to focus on the trade-offs between biodiversity loss and ecosystem services. Yet this balancing between economic growth and sustainable development in tropical regions is still far from being solved, there are a few things that we can do to address some of the issues caused by deforestation: the construction of strategies and conservation plans by the public stakeholders using the knowledge obtained by academic research. That is the only way that we can assure that the tropical regions and their forests will help the future generations by mitigating the impacts of climate change.

This section of the book aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art in habitat fragmentation, natural recovery, soil erosion, river discharge, land-atmosphere exchanges, water cycle, carbon balance, and resilience of the forests to extreme events, taking into consideration the drivers of land degradation and deforestation and further transitions under a climate change scenario.

We hope the issues addressed here contribute to a more integrative knowledge of the impacts of deforestation in the environment and help to the understanding both of the public stakeholders and general population that there is just one way to obtain benefits from tropical forests: keep the trees standing.
