Silva, C.A.; Santilli, G.; Sano, E.E.; Laneve, G. Fire Occurrences and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Remote Sens.2021, 13, 376.
Silva, C.A.; Santilli, G.; Sano, E.E.; Laneve, G. Fire Occurrences and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 376.
Silva, C.A.; Santilli, G.; Sano, E.E.; Laneve, G. Fire Occurrences and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Remote Sens.2021, 13, 376.
Silva, C.A.; Santilli, G.; Sano, E.E.; Laneve, G. Fire Occurrences and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 376.
Abstract
This work presents the dynamics of forest clearing in the Brazilian Amazon during the period 2006–2019 in which includes the approval of the new Brazilian Forest Code in 2012. The study was carried out in the Brazilian Amazon, Pará State and in the municipality of Novo Progresso (Pará State). The analysis was based on deforestation and fire hotspot datasets issued by the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE), produced based on optical and thermal sensors onboard different satellites. Deforestation data was also used to assess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the slash-and-burn practices. The work showed a good correlation between the occurrence of fires in the newly deforested area in the municipality of Novo Progresso and the slash-and-burn practices. The same trend was also observed in the Pará State, suggesting a common practice along the deforestation arch. The study indicated positive coefficients of determination of 0.72 and 0.66 between deforestation and fire occurrences for the municipality of Novo Progresso and Pará State, respectively. The increased number of fire occurrences in the primary forest suggests possible ecosystem degradation. Deforestation reported for 2019 surpassed 10,000 km2, a significant intensification comparatively higher than the previous ten years which was on an average of 6,760 km2. The steady increase of deforestation in the Amazon after 2012 has been a worldwide concern because of the forest loss itself as well as the massive GHG emitted in the Brazilian Amazon (295 million tons of net CO2 equivalent in the year 2019). Better correlation of deforestation and fires occurrences reported from satellite images confirmed the slash-and-burn practice and the secondary effect of deforestation, which degrades primary forest surrounding the deforested areas.
Keywords
Amazon rainforest; forestry degradation; greenhouse gas emission; remote sensing application.
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
