Fire is used around the world for many purposes including clearing areas of natural vegetation for economic activities and managing vegetation regrowth in already opened sites. In Brazil, fire is mainly used to convert natural vegetation areas to agricultural activities (slash and burn) and to manage pasture for livestock stimulating the sprout of grasslands. The two most extensive biomes in Brazil, the Amazon Forest and the Cerrado, are subject to several fire events every dry season. The Cerrado has evolved adapted to fire and is considered a fire-dependent biome. The Amazon on the other hand, as a tropical moist broadleaf forest, does not show similar characteristics and is a fire-sensitive biome. This project aims to map fire scars over 10 years (from 2002 to 2011) in a specific area of the deforestation arc, between the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. This information is crucial for fire zoning management plans in indigenous land and protected areas across this region. In order to accomplish this time-series analysis, Landsat TM and Landsat ETM+ were processed using Spectral Mixture Analysis techniques in Google Earth Engine.
Results/Conclusions
The chosen study site is a subset of the transition zone between the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, focusing on the State of Mato Grosso – Brazil, a region known for its high deforestation rates. There are protected areas and native people reserves under pressure by economic activities, and fire is an important driver in the conversion of natural vegetation. Processing and analyzing 10 years of imagery from the sensors Landsat 5TM and Landsat 7 EMT+ permitted to identify and map fire scars. Results show that a total of 11,300 hectares were burned between 2002 and 2011 within the territory of three indigenous lands present in the study site and that 2.250 hectares have burnt more than once and up to 6 times in 10 years.