Changing patterns in deforestation avoidance by different protection types in the Brazilian Amazon.

Tomas Jusys,Asim Zia

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0195900

Abstract

This study quantifies how much deforestation was avoided due to legal protection in Legal Amazon in strictly protected areas, sustainable use areas, and indigenous lands. Only regions that are protected de jure (i.e., where deforestation is avoided due to effective laws rather than remoteness) were considered, so that the potential of legal protection could be better assessed. This is a cross-sectional approach, which allows comparisons in terms of avoided deforestation among the different types of protection in the same period. This study covers three different periods. Regions protected de jure were sampled by estimating a threshold distance at which deforestation starts to diminish and retaining all pixels up to that distance, and deforestation that has been avoided due to legal protection was estimated by matching. Indigenous lands avoided the highest percentage of deforestation during the 2001–2004 and 2005–2008 periods, followed by those under strict protection and sustainable use areas, in respective order. Shifting patterns in deforestation avoidance are clearly noticeable for the 2009–2014 period when 1) strictly protected areas outperformed indigenous lands in terms of the percentage of saved forests, 2) some protected regions began to attract deforestation instead of avoiding it, and 3) sustainable use areas, on average, did not avoid deforestation.

Highlights

Forests provide several environmental services, including mitigating greenhouse gas emissions; providing water for human consumption, irrigation, and energy production; conserving biodiversity; and providing scenic beauty for recreation and ecotourism [1]
The protected area system represents a key measure for protecting valuable ecosystems from deforestation
Even though sustainable use areas did not contribute to deforestation avoidance on average during the 2009–2014 period, the findings revealed that regions at higher altitudes, in closer proximity to official roads and rivers, with less standing forests, or with lower precipitation levels avoided more than 1% of deforestation under the sustainable use designation during the same time in protected areas established in or prior to 2000 (Table 3)

Summary

Introduction

Forests provide several environmental services, including mitigating greenhouse gas emissions; providing water for human consumption, irrigation, and energy production; conserving biodiversity; and providing scenic beauty for recreation and ecotourism [1]. The protected area system represents a key measure for protecting valuable ecosystems from deforestation. The third type of protected area–indigenous lands–is meant to protect.

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Results

Conclusion