Studies of forest areas in regeneration through Landsat images

• Grant number: 94/02706-5
• Support type: Regular Research Grants
• Duration: September 01, 1994 - September 30, 1996
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Forestry Resources and Forestry Engineering
• Principal researcher: Getúlio Teixeira Batista
• Grantee: Getúlio Teixeira Batista
• Home Institution: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brasil). São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The change in the use of land involving the conversion of forest into pasture or other agricultural uses implies the emission of greenhouse effect gases, principally CO2 into the atmosphere. Areas in the process of regeneration contribute to the sequestration of part of the CO2 by means of the process of photosynthesis. Knowledge of the carbon balance of Amazonia is fairly precarious and we do not know the area and rates of incorporation of carbon for areas in regeneration. This project is aimed at characterizing areas of secondary forest, i.e. areas previously occupied by forest, which were cleared, subsequently abandoned and are currently in the process of regeneration. This project ties in with the long term objective of understanding the contribution of the regrowth of the forest on the carbon balance in the Amazon region. The project will explore the integrated use of several techniques, including the use of satellite images of remote sensing (Landsat), geoprocessing through geographical information systems, geographical positioning by satellite using the Global Positioning System (GPS) and field work to characterize the parameters of the vegetation, including floristic inventory, inventory of volume aimed at estimating biomass through allometric equations and the spectral characterization of areas of regrowth. The results expected from this experiment include the definition of the classes of regrowth characterizable through the satellite data (e.g. areas in regeneration from zero to two years and less than five, areas with more than five years and less than 10 and areas in regeneration with more than 10 years) with calibration of the accuracy obtained by the field verification and the evaluation of the methodology to be tested in other areas aiming, in the future, at a regional estimate of the areas of regrowth and their contribution to the carbon balance in Brazilian Legal Amazonia. (AU)