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Forest Fragmentation and Fires in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon-Maranhao State, Brazil

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Author(s):
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Silva-Junior, Celso H. L. ; Buna, Arisson T. M. ; Bezerra, Denilson S. ; Costa, Ozeas S., Jr. ; Santos, Adriano L. ; Basson, Lidielze O. D. ; Santos, Andre L. S. ; Alvarado, Swanni T. ; Almeida, Catherine T. ; Freire, Ana T. G. ; Rousseau, Guillaume X. ; Celentano, Danielle ; Silva, Fabricio B. ; Pinheiro, Maria S. S. ; Amaral, Silvana ; Kampel, Milton ; Vedovato, Laura B. ; Anderson, Liana O. ; Aragao, Luiz E. O. C.
Total Authors: 19
Document type: Journal article
Source: FIRE-SWITZERLAND; v. 5, n. 3, p. 17-pg., 2022-06-01.
Abstract

Tropical forests provide essential environmental services to human well-being. In the world, Brazil has the largest continuous area of these forests. However, in the state of Maranhao, in the eastern Amazon, only 24% of the original forest cover remains. We integrated and analyzed active fires, burned area, land use and land cover, rainfall, and surface temperature datasets to understand forest fragmentation and forest fire dynamics from a remote sensing approach. We found that forest cover in the Maranhao Amazon region had a net reduction of 31,302 km(2) between 1985 and 2017, with 63% of losses occurring in forest core areas. Forest edges extent was reduced by 38%, while the size of isolated forest patches increased by 239%. Forest fires impacted, on average, around 1031 +/- 695 km(2) year(-1) of forest edges between 2003 and 2017, the equivalent of 60% of the total burned forest in this period. Our results demonstrated that forest fragmentation is an important factor controlling temporal and spatial variability of forest fires in the eastern Amazon region. Thus, both directly and indirectly, forest fragmentation can compromise biodiversity and carbon stocks in this Amazon region. (AU)

FAPESP's process: 20/06734-0 - Unravelling landscape drivers of forest recovery in a successional perspective
Grantee:Catherine Torres de Almeida
Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
FAPESP's process: 20/16457-3 - MAP-Fire: a virtual platform for managing the carbon balance between fire emissions and secondary forest removals for the State of Maranhão
Grantee:Liana Oighenstein Anderson
Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
FAPESP's process: 16/02018-2 - Interannual variation of Amazon Basin greenhouse gas balances and their controls in a warming and increasingly variable climate – Carbam: the Amazon carbon balance long-term study
Grantee:Luciana Vanni Gatti
Support Opportunities: Research Program on Global Climate Change - Thematic Grants
FAPESP's process: 20/15230-5 - Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Innovation - RCG2I
Grantee:Julio Romano Meneghini
Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Research Centers in Engineering Program