Roads in the Southwestern Amazon, State of Acre, between 2007 and 2019

Eric De Souza Nascimento,Sonaira Souza Da Silva,Leandra Bordignon,Amintas Brandão,Celso H L Silva Junior,Carlos M Souza,Antonio Willian Flores De Melo

doi:10.3390/land10020106

Abstract

Over the past 40 years, roads have been the main driver behind the State of Acre’s occupation and development. However, the expansion of roads, has often been associated with the advance of deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and social conflicts. There are no up-to-date data available on the current extent of Acre’s road network nor its environmental and socioenvironmental impacts. In this study, we updated the State of Acre’s road network map for the period 2007 to 2019 through the visual interpretation of 153 Landsat images (5, 7, and 8) at a scale of 1:50,000. To estimate the impact of roads, we measured the distribution of roads in municipalities and in different land tenure categories and calculated the correlation between roads and annual deforestation. Up to 2019, we estimated 19,620 km of roads, of which 92% were unofficial roads, 6% federal roads, and 2% state roads. The roads increased at an average annual rate of 590 km year−1. The most significant advance in road length between 2007 and 2019 was in protected areas (240%), followed by public lands (68%) and settlement projects (66%). We recommend monitoring of the road network to understand the landscape’s evolution and support actions against illicit environmental and socioenvironmental impacts.

Highlights

The Amazon occupation occurred along rivers and roads, which facilitated the transportation of people and cargo, but roads are one of the main drivers of deforestation in the region [1,2,3]
The official and unofficial roads must be continuously monitored as land access routes have determined the legal, and mainly illegal, deforestation fronts in the Amazon
The application of remote sensing techniques is critical for monitoring illicit environmental activities

Summary

Introduction

The Amazon occupation occurred along rivers and roads, which facilitated the transportation of people and cargo, but roads are one of the main drivers of deforestation in the region [1,2,3]. Government programs initiated in the 1990s, such as the Brazil in Action program (Programa Brasil em Ação), followed by the Advance Brazil Program (Programa Avança Brasil), and the Program for the Acceleration of Growth (PAC—Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento) aimed at economic growth, boosted the expansion of the network of roads in the Amazon [4,5]. These roads favored the migration of people from various parts of Brazil, which has led to the intensification of logging, deforestation, fires, and expansion of the agricultural frontier [6,7,8]. The continuous pursuit of an ecological–social–economic balance is needed to diminish the environmental impacts that compromise regional social development [11]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion