S-PLUS Clusters And Large-scale Environments (SCALE). I. A Catalog of Known Clusters and Groups in DR5 and a Pilot Study of Abell 4038

Within the framework of the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS), we introduce S -PLUS C lusters A nd L arge-scale E nvironments (SCALE), a project dedicated to the study of galaxy clusters, groups, and their environments using 12-band photometry of S-PLUS combined with spectroscopic and photometric data from the literature. In this first paper, we present a catalog of 83 previously known systems in the redshift range 0.008 ≤ z spec ≤ 0.1, for which we derive R 200 , M 200 , and velocity dispersions. Spectroscopic members are selected and matched with S-PLUS photometric redshifts (photo- z s). We find very good agreement between literature spectroscopic redshifts (spec- z s) and S-PLUS photometric redshifts (photo- z s), demonstrating the potential of the latter for cluster and group membership determination. As a proof of concept, we obtain photometric memberships for Abell 4038 using the reliable photometric membership technique. A two- and three-dimensional analysis of the region within 10 h −1 Mpc (10 × R 200 ) from the center of Abell 4038 reveals about a dozen substructures including two additional clusters within 1.3 × R 200 (Abell 4038B and Abell 4049). A color–luminosity segregation analysis shows that more luminous (less luminous) galaxies are redder (bluer), as expected. Low-concentration galaxies ( C ≤ 2.5) exhibit a weaker color–luminosity dependence, compared to higher-concentration ones, indicating mass-dependent evolutionary pathways that challenge a simple morphology–color dichotomy, with low-luminosity galaxies presenting bluer colors largely independent of concentration. The SCALE catalog provides a valuable basis for future studies of large-scale structures and their connection to galaxy evolution.