S-PLUS Clusters And Large-scale Environments (SCALE): I. A catalog of known systems 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 Clusters And Large-scale Environments (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 $0.008 \leq z_{\rm spec} \leq 0.1$, 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 excellent 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 ($10\times R_{200}$) from the center of Abell 4038 reveals about a dozen substructures including two additional clusters within $1.3\times R_{200}$ (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 ($C \leq 2.5$) 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.