Abstract
This study investigated the land use and land cover changes in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, for the period of 2002 through 2017, to determine if forested areas were burned or converted to other land uses, to analyze the use of fire as a catalyst and mechanism for land cover change, and to determine if there was a relationship between land use changes and gross domestic product (GDP). MapBiomas classifications and MODIS data were analyzed using the Google Earth Engine. The results of the analysis found that there were minimal changes in the forested areas in São Paulo during the study period; however, there was a 5% increase in natural forest and a 75% increase in planted forest cover. On the other hand, there was a 128% increase in sugarcane, and nearly a 50% decrease in pasture land coverage, suggesting that land was converted from pasture to more profitable agricultural land. Finally, there was a strong positive correlation (r = 0.96) between the increase in sugarcane and the GDP, and a negative correlation between the frequency of fire events and economic production (r = −0.62). Overall, there was a decline in fire events in São Paulo, with fire events occurring in less than 2% of the total observed land area by 2017. This overall declining trend in fire events are likely the direct result of increases in green harvest methods, which prevent the need for pre-harvest burning.
Highlights
Brazil is the world’s most forested and most biodiverse country, yet its forested regions are constantly endangered by threats of deforestation [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
As one of the major objectives of the study was to assess the impact of fire events on land use changes and domestic profit, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) MCD64A1 product data were used to create a fire mask over the region of São Paulo (SP) using Google Earth Engine (GEE)
The present study had three main objectives: to investigate if forested areas in SP were being burned or converted for other land uses, to analyze the use of fire as a catalyst and mechanism for land cover change, and to determine if there was a relationship between land use changes and gross domestic product (GDP)
Summary
Brazil is the world’s most forested and most biodiverse country, yet its forested regions are constantly endangered by threats of deforestation [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. The Atlantic Rainforest lies primarily in Brazil (92% of the forest) and is located along coastal and inland regions, and has coverage in 17 states, from Ceará to Rio. Grande do Sul [9,12], over mountains and plateaus (Figure 1). Of the 17 states which contain fragments of the original Atlantic Rainforest, the state of São Paulo has the largest forest area. Studies estimate that 80% of the state was once covered by forest, and only 16.6% of the territory is contains forest [15,16]. A major contributing factor to the loss of forested areas is land conversion for agricultural purposes
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