For half a century, the process of economic integration of the Amazon has been based on intensive use of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources, which has brought significant basin-wide environmental alterations. The rural development in the Amazonia pushed the agricultural frontier swiftly, resulting in widespread land-cover change, but agriculture in the Amazon has been of low productivity and unsustainable. The loss of biodiversity and continued deforestation will lead to high risks of irreversible change of its tropical forests. It has been established by modeling studies that the Amazon may have two “tipping points,” namely, temperature increase of 4 °C or deforestation exceeding 40% of the forest area. If transgressed, large-scale “savannization” of mostly southern and eastern Amazon may take place. The region has warmed about 1 °C over the last 60 y, and total deforestation is reaching 20% of the forested area. The recent significant reductions in deforestation—80% reduction in the Brazilian Amazon in the last decade—opens up opportunities for a novel sustainable development paradigm for the future of the Amazon. We argue for a new development paradigm—away from only attempting to reconcile maximizing conservation versus intensification of traditional agriculture and expansion of hydropower capacity—in which we research, develop, and scale a high-tech innovation approach that sees the Amazon as a global public good of biological assets that can enable the creation of innovative high-value products, services, and platforms through combining advanced digital, biological, and material technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in progress.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/39/10759.full.pdf

Land-use and climate change risks in the Amazon and the need of a novel sustainable development paradigm.

A Landsat-based humid tropical forest disturbance alert was implemented for Peru, the Republic of Congo and Kalimantan, Indonesia. Alerts were mapped on a weekly basis as new terrain-corrected Landsat 7 and 8 images were made available; results are presented for all of 2014 and through September 2015. The three study areas represent different stages of the forest land use transition, with all featuring a variety of disturbance dynamics including logging, smallholder agriculture, and agroindustrial development. Results for Peru were formally validated and alerts found to have very high user's accuracies and moderately high producer's accuracies, indicating an appropriately conservative product suitable for supporting land management and enforcement activities. Complete pan-tropical coverage will be implemented during 2016 in support of the Global Forest Watch initiative. To date, Global Forest Watch produces annual global forest loss area estimates using a comparatively richer set of Landsat inputs. The alert product is presented as an interim update of forest disturbance events between comprehensive annual updates. Results from this study are available for viewing and download at http://glad.geog.umd.edu/forest-alerts and www.globalforestwatch.org.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/3/034008/pdf

Humid tropical forest disturbance alerts using Landsat data

Improving near-real time deforestation monitoring in tropical dry forests by combining dense Sentinel-1 time series with Landsat and ALOS-2 PALSAR-2

Deforestation rates in primary humid tropical forests of the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA) have declined significantly since the early 2000s. Brazil's national forest monitoring system provides extensive information for the BLA but lacks independent validation and systematic coverage outside of primary forests. We use a sample-based approach to consistently quantify 2000-2013 tree cover loss in all forest types of the region and characterize the types of forest disturbance. Our results provide unbiased forest loss area estimates, which confirm the reduction of primary forest clearing (deforestation) documented by official maps. By the end of the study period, nonprimary forest clearing, together with primary forest degradation within the BLA, became comparable in area to deforestation, accounting for an estimated 53% of gross tree cover loss area and 26 to 35% of gross aboveground carbon loss. The main type of tree cover loss in all forest types was agroindustrial clearing for pasture (63% of total loss area), followed by small-scale forest clearing (12%) and agroindustrial clearing for cropland (9%), with natural woodlands being directly converted into croplands more often than primary forests. Fire accounted for 9% of the 2000-2013 primary forest disturbance area, with peak disturbances corresponding to droughts in 2005, 2007, and 2010. The rate of selective logging exploitation remained constant throughout the study period, contributing to forest fire vulnerability and degradation pressures. As the forest land use transition advances within the BLA, comprehensive tracking of forest transitions beyond primary forest loss is required to achieve accurate carbon accounting and other monitoring objectives.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/3/4/e1601047.full.pdf

Types and rates of forest disturbance in Brazilian Legal Amazon, 2000-2013.

This paper presents an overview of the state of measurement and monitoring capabilities for forests in the context of REDD+ needs, with a focus on what is currently possible, where improvements are needed, and what capabilities will be advanced in the near-term with new technologies already under development. We summarize the role of remote sensing (both satellite and aircraft) for observational monitoring of forests, including measuring changes in their current and past extent for setting baselines, their carbon stock density for estimating emissions in areas that are deforested or degraded, and their regrowth dynamics following disturbance. We emphasize the synergistic role of integrating field inventory measurements with remote sensing for best practices in monitoring, reporting and verification. We also address the potential of remote sensing for enforcing safeguards on conservation of natural forests and biodiversity. We argue that capabilities exist now to meet operational needs for REDD+ measurement, reporting, and verification and reference levels. For some other areas of importance for REDD+, such as safeguards for natural forests and biodiversity, monitoring capabilities are approaching operational in the near term. For all REDD+ needs, measurement capabilities will rapidly advance in the next few years as a result of new technology as well as advances in capacity building both within and outside of the tropical forest nations on which REDD+ is primarily focused.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/12/123001/pdf

Measurement and monitoring needs, capabilities and potential for addressing reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation under REDD+

The Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA), the largest global rainforest on earth, contains nearly 30% of the rainforest on earth. Given the regional complexity and dynamics, there are large government investments focused on controlling and preventing deforestation. The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) is currently developing five complementary BLA monitoring systems, among which the near real-time deforestation detection system (DETER) excels. DETER employs MODIS 250 m imagery and almost daily revisit, enabling an early warning system to support surveillance and control of deforestation. The aim of this paper is to present the methodology and results of the DETER based on AWIFS data, called DETER-B. Supported by 56 m images, the new system is effective in detecting deforestation smaller than 25 ha, concentrating 80% of its total detections and 45% of the total mapped area in this range. It also presents higher detection capability in identifying areas between 25 and 100 ha. The area estimation per municipality is statistically equal to those of the official deforestation data (PRODES) and allows the identification of degradation and logging patterns not observed with the traditional DETER system.

Janaina Sant Ana Maia

Papers

DETER-B: The New Amazon Near Real-Time Deforestation Detection System