The Fate of the Forest in Brazil, 2000 to 2013

Abstract:

Better understanding the drivers of tropical deforestation is essential to research on global climate change and biodiversity loss, and would be particularly informative to ongoing international climate change negotiations. Geographically explicit maps of post-forest land cover can provide valuable information about the extent and spatial distribution of the major drivers of deforestation. Brazil is the country with the largest extent of tropical forest in the world and the one with the most tropical forest cover loss since the turn of this century. This fate of the forest study aims to determine which land covers have replaced forest cover in Brazil. Using a classification tree algorithm, we determined pasture and cropland extent in areas of forest cover loss in Brazil circa 2012. We used 30 m resolution Landsat data for the 2000-2013 time period as well as tree cover loss data from the Global Forest Change (GFC) maps published by Hansen et al. (2013). The GFC data was used to mask out areas not categorized as forest cover lost between 2000 and 2013. Additionally, the year of loss layer was used to disaggregate pasture and cropland extent by year. Our results comprehensively demonstrate the extent to which pasture is the dominant post-forest land cover in Brazil. More broadly, the product reveals spatiotemporal patterns of forest conversion to pasture and cropland in Brazil, which could lead to a better understanding of the underlying drivers of deforestation.