Abstract
Abstract. Monitoring the conversion of native vegetation has challenged Brazilian government and scientists since the 1980s. In the case of the Amazonian forests, the Amazon Gross Deforestation Monitoring Project - PRODES has developed an effective methodology that provides consistent annual data on deforestation areas on a scale of 1:250,000, since 1988. In this article, we present some aspects of the evolution of this methodology, the key processes to produce accurate deforestation maps during the last 30 years and the new challenges that the Project would face. A central lesson is that no computational technique has, to date, been able to achieve the quality of deforestation maps produced by visual interpretation of satellite images and manual mapping.
Highlights
Territorial management aligned with sustainable development depends, among others, on reliable primary land cover data
Considering the benchmark achievements excellence of the Amazonian Gross Deforestation Monitoring Project - PRODES, the methodological approach developed by INPE and operated by FUNCATE was borrowed to design the expansion of monitoring throughout the whole Brazilian territory
In this work we present the evolution of the monitoring system developed by INPE under the General Coordination of Earth Observation
Summary
Territorial management aligned with sustainable development depends, among others, on reliable primary land cover data. Considering the benchmark achievements excellence of the Amazonian Gross Deforestation Monitoring Project - PRODES, the methodological approach developed by INPE and operated by FUNCATE was borrowed to design the expansion of monitoring throughout the whole Brazilian territory. The scope of this national monitoring system represents a challenge considering the large volume of data to be produced and the discrepancies in vegetation and land use characteristics between each biome. Mapping activities focused on primary forest vegetation within the Legal Amazon, where the accumulated gross deforestation, closed to 300,000 km by 1980, reached 788,000 km in 2018
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