Amazon in flames 8 – Deforestation, fire and ranching on public lands

3 de May de 2022

May 3, 2022

Caroline S. C. Salomão, Marcelo C. C. Stabile, Lucimar Souza, Ane Alencar, Isabel Castro, Carolina Guyot, Paulo Moutinho

Public lands, which include indigenous lands (ILs), conservation units (CUs) and undesignated public land, occupy about 276 million hectares in the Amazon biome – if it were a European country, it would only be smaller in territory than Russia. These areas are constantly under pressure from invasions and illegal activities, which generate deforestation and fire (Alencar et al., 2021). In 2019 and 2020, about 44%, of annual forest clearing in the Amazon occurred on public lands.

Pastures, compared to other land uses, appear to be the main tool for the occupation of public lands in the Amazon, especially in regions at the frontier of deforestation (Tyukavina et al., 2017). However, little was known about the extent to which pastures have been used for illegal occupation of these lands, or how much of these pastures remain active and perennial.

In this technical note, we assess the evolution of the trajectory of illegal conversion of forests on public lands to other land uses between 1997 and 2020, with an emphasis on public lands not yet designated, in order to answer some of these questions.

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This project is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Find out more at un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals.

Veja também

See also

Fire, fragmentation, and windstorms: A recipe for tropical forest degradation

Fire, fragmentation, and windstorms: A recipe for tropical forest degradation

Widespread degradation of tropical forests is caused by a variety of disturbances that interact in ways that are not well understood. To explore potential synergies between edge effects, fire and windstorm damage as causes of Amazonian forest degradation, we quantified vegetation responses to a 30‐min, high‐intensity windstorm that in 2012, swept through a large‐scale fire experiment that borders an agricultural field. Our pre‐ and postwindstorm measurements include tree mortality rates and modes of death, above‐ground biomass, and airborne LiDAR‐based estimates of tree heights and canopy disturbance (i.e., number and size of gaps). The experimental area in the southeastern Amazonia includes three 50‐ha plots established in 2004 that were unburned (Control), burned annually (B1yr), or burned at 3‐year intervals (B3yr).