Abstract
The objective of this work was to detect land use and land cover changes in the municipality of Rondon do Pará, in the Brazilian Legal Amazon, through the Geographic Object-based Image Analysis (GEOBIA), aiming to identify whether its inclusion in the list of priority municipalities for actions to prevent, monitor and control deforestation in the Amazon (Decree 6.321/2007), has inhibited this process. The methodological procedure involved the calculation of vegetation indices to highlight interest classes, the segmentation of the images into geo-objects and the classification using Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm. Also, we evaluated the relationship between annual rates of particulate material with a diameter of fewer than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) emitted from fires and deforestation in Rondon do Pará. The results show the reduction of deforestation rates but the conversion, in absolute values, of 984,47 km² of natural vegetation to anthropized areas along the 2006-2017 period, and the reduction of the average PM2.5 fire emissions from 31,107 tons year-1 between 2002 and 2007 to 10,394 ton year-1 in the post-inclusion period (2008-2019). This represents that the inclusion of Rondon do Pará in this list was beneficial, but the suppression of natural vegetation was not totally curbed, reinforcing that changes from environmental policies are gradual. Activities that do not use fire to suppress natural vegetation, such as selective logging, common in Rondon do Pará, had impact. This makes it necessary to intensify inspections and the development of sustainable actions in the region.
Highlights
Due to the unrestrained advance of the deforestation frontier in the Legal Amazon, the municipality of Rondon do Pará, located in the state of Pará, was included in 2008 by the Ministry of Environment (MMA) in the List of Priority Municipalities (LPM) for actions to prevent, monitor and control deforestation in the Amazon, according to the Presidential Decree 6321 of December 2007 (BRASIL, 2007)
By visual interpretation of the two land use and land cover (LULC) classifications derived from the Geographic Object-based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) approach applied to Landsat images considering the TerraClass Project interpretation key (COUTINHO et al, 2008; ALMEIDA et al, 2016), we noted an advance of Anthropized areas in Rondon do Pará after 2006, especially driven by the expansion of agricultural practices to the Eastern and Southern portions of the municipality, and pasture to the Northern and Western portions
The inclusion of Rondon do Pará in the LPM for the control of deforestation was beneficial to contain the annual deforestation rates but did not eliminate, in absolute values, the process until 2017, because the suppression of natural vegetation was not totally curbed in the municipality, which reinforces that the changes derived from environmental policies are gradual
Summary
Due to the unrestrained advance of the deforestation frontier in the Legal Amazon, the municipality of Rondon do Pará, located in the state of Pará, was included in 2008 by the Ministry of Environment (MMA) in the List of Priority Municipalities (LPM) for actions to prevent, monitor and control deforestation in the Amazon, according to the Presidential Decree 6321 of December 2007 (BRASIL, 2007). Priority status was determined based on three municipality-level criteria: (i) total deforested area; (ii) total deforested area over the past three years; and (iii) increase in the deforestation rate in at least three of the last five ones (BRASIL, 2007) The municipalities of this list are subject to measures for the integration and improvement of monitoring and control actions of organs from all governmental spheres, land and territorial planning and the incentive to environmentally sustainable economic activities (ARIMA et al, 2014; ASSUNÇÃO; GANDOUR; ROCHA, 2015). As deforestation goes beyond environmental consequences, resulting in social phenomena such as the expansion of agricultural activities and agrarian conflicts (SANT'ANNA; YOUNG, 2010), the need to ally government actions and the society to control deforestation is emphasized, increasing the efficiency of inspections and public policies, the implementation of projects to raise public awareness and the use of new techniques for strategic monitoring actions
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