Spatial and temporal patterns of deforestation in Rio Cajarí Extrative Reserve, Amapá, Brazil

The Rio Cajarí Extractive Reserve (RCER) is a sustainable use protected area located in Southern Amapá state, Brazil. This protected area is home to traditional agro-extractive families, but has been increasingly invaded by commercial agriculture producers. In this work, we test the hypothesis that...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2012-12, Vol.7 (12), p.e51893-e51893
Main Authors: Funi, Claudia, Paese, Adriana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Bertholletia excelsa
Biology
Brazil
Clearings (openings)
Computer Science
Conservation of Natural Resources
Deforestation
Ecosystem
Fieldwork
Forests
Function analysis
Land degradation
Landsat
Landsat satellites
Miners
Mining
Patches (structures)
Protected areas
Remote sensing
Satellite imagery
Spatio-Temporal Analysis
Sustainable use
Vegetation cover
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Rio Cajarí Extractive Reserve (RCER) is a sustainable use protected area located in Southern Amapá state, Brazil. This protected area is home to traditional agro-extractive families, but has been increasingly invaded by commercial agriculture producers. In this work, we test the hypothesis that the RCER implementation has distinctly affected spatial patterns of deforestation and rates of bare soil and secondary forest formation by the social groups occupying the protected area and its surrounding area. Detailed maps of vegetation cover and deforestation were elaborated, based on Landsat TM images from 1991, 1998, 2007 and 2008 and Linear Spectral Mixture Models. Based on an extensive fieldwork, patches were classified according to the agents causing deforestation and characterized with ten explanatory variables. A discriminant function analysis was used to identify homogeneous groups based on the data. Results show increased rates and distinct spatial patterns of deforestation by three groups: extractivists, non traditional commercial agriculture producers, and a less representative group constituted of miners, cattle and timber producers. In all analyzed dates, clearings by the extrativist community presented the highest total area and smaller average sizes and were located in close proximity to villages. Deforestation patches by the non-traditional group were exclusively associated with ombrophilous forests; these presented higher average sizes and proximity indexes, and showed increased aggregation and large cluster formation. No significant differences were observed in deforestation patterns by the three groups inside or outside the reserve.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0051893