Abstract
Amazonia is home to more than half of the world’s remaining tropical forests, playing a key role as reservoirs of carbon and biodiversity. However, whether at a slower or faster pace, continued deforestation causes forest fragmentation in this region. Thus, understanding the relationship between forest fragmentation and fire incidence and intensity in this region is critical. Here, we use MODIS Active Fire Product (MCD14ML, Collection 6) as a proxy of forest fire incidence and intensity (measured as Fire Radiative Power—FRP), and the Brazilian official Land-use and Land-cover Map to understand the relationship among deforestation, fragmentation, and forest fire on a deforestation frontier in the Brazilian Amazonia. Our results showed that forest fire incidence and intensity vary with levels of habitat loss and forest fragmentation. About 95% of active fires and the most intense ones (FRP > 500 megawatts) were found in the first kilometre from the edges in forest areas. Changes made in 2012 in the Brazilian main law regulating the conservation of forests within private properties reduced the obligation to recover illegally deforested areas, thus allowing for the maintenance of fragmented areas in the Brazilian Amazonia. Our results reinforce the need to guarantee low levels of fragmentation in the Brazilian Amazonia in order to avoid the degradation of its forests by fire and the related carbon emissions.
Highlights
Tropical forests are globally important reservoirs of carbon (C) and biodiversity [1,2,3]
Our results showed that the analysed landscape metrics exhibited different relationships with habitat loss (HL, Figure 2)
(1) the proportion of conservation areas and indigenous territories within Amazonian municipalities is equal to or higher than 50% or (2) conservation areas and indigenous territories represent 65% of the state territory. These legal modifications together reduced the country’s “forest debt” by 58% [69], which may allow for the maintenance of the fragmentation of Amazonian landscapes, keeping them susceptible to the occurrence of fire, as we demonstrated in our results
Summary
Tropical forests are globally important reservoirs of carbon (C) and biodiversity [1,2,3]. Vegetation in this region stores between 350–600 Pg C [3,4,5,6,7], while the atmosphere stores about 750 Pg C [8]. The intense occupation of Brazilian Amazonia from the 70s [14], aiming to expand agricultural and livestock activities and to increase the wood supply, besides a general lack of enforcement of environmental laws, caused the dramatic increase of deforestation rates, reaching a peak of 27,772 km in 2004 [15,16]. After 2005, a steep decrease in deforestation rates was observed, which can be attributed to a combination of factors, including governmental enforcement of environmental laws, restrictions
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