Abstract
Persistent forest loss in the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA) is responsible for carbon emission, reduction of ecosystem services, and loss of biodiversity. Combining spatial data analysis with high spatial resolution data for forest cover and forest loss, we quantified the spatial and temporal patterns of forest dynamics in the BLA. We identified an alarming trend of increasing deforestation, with especially high rates in 2016 and 2017. Moreover, the creation of forest cover fragments is faster than ever due to decreasing size and dispersion of forest loss patches. From 2001 to 2017, the number of large forest loss patches decreased significantly, accompanied by a reduction in the size of these patches. Enforcement of field inspections and of initiatives to promote forest conservation will be required to stop this trend.
Highlights
Since the 1970s, the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA), a region that includes nine states in the Amazon Basin, has been a stage for intense land use and rapid land cover change[1], despite the forest’s important roles as a carbon sink[2,3] and biodiversity hotspot[4]
The number of patches influenced by fire and the forest loss area potentially caused by fire closely followed these trends
The PRODES and Global Forest Change (GFC) methodologies differ, our analysis of forest loss in the BLA agrees with the analysis of Richards et al.[16]: both datasets reveal a similar temporal pattern, especially in terms of the known decrease of forest loss from 2004 until 2012, followed by gradually increasing deforestation[16]
Summary
Since the 1970s, the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA), a region that includes nine states in the Amazon Basin, has been a stage for intense land use and rapid land cover change[1], despite the forest’s important roles as a carbon sink[2,3] and biodiversity hotspot[4]. The forest loss increases the region’s carbon emission[6] and reduces its ability to provide ecosystem functions[7] These environmental problems have intensified due to forest fragmentation and the edge effects[8,9] caused by deforestation. Using the GFC forest cover map for 2000, Taubert et al.[19] developed models that predicted a high increase of forest fragmentation despite low rates of forest loss. They suggested that only the combination of a strong reduction of deforestation rates with increased reforestation efforts would decrease the fragmentation process. Seymor and Harris[25] propose that in order to reduce deforestation rates it is necessary to organize and apply policies that are designed to the specifications of each region, since the drivers of deforestation are complex and are under continuous changes
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