Examining deforestation and agropasture dynamics along the Brazilian TransAmazon Highway using multitemporal Landsat imagery |
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| Authors: | Guiying Li Emilio Moran Miquéias Freitas Calvi Luciano Vieira Dutra Mateus Batistella |
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| Institution: | 1. Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Subtropical Resources and Environment, Fujian Normal University, 350007, Fuzhou, China;2. School of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, 350007, Fuzhou, China;3. Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, 48823, East Lansing, MI, USA;4. Faculty of Forestry, Federal University of Pará, 68.372-040, Altamira, PA, Brazil;5. Image Processing Division, National Institute for Space Research, S?o Jose dos Campos, SP, 12245-010, Brazil;6. Embrapa Agricultural Informatics, Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), Brasília, Brazil |
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| Abstract: | This research aims to understand the difference of major land-cover change results caused in various time periods and to examine the impacts of human-induced factors on land-cover changes along the TransAmazon Highway region. The Landsat Thematic Mapper and Operational Land Imager data from 2011, 2014, and 2017 and our previous land-cover classification results in 1991, 2000, and 2008 were used to examine land-cover dynamics. A classification system consisting of five land-cover classes – primary forest (PF), secondary forest (SF), agropasture (AP), urban area, and water – were chosen. The hierarchical-based classification method was used to generate land-cover classification results, and the post-classification comparison approach was used to produce detailed “from-to” conversions for each detection period. The emphasis was on deforestation of PF, dynamic change of SF and AP, and urbanization over time. The impacts of human-induced factors such as population and economic conditions on urban expansion, AP expansion, and deforestation were examined. This research indicated that selection of a suitable time period was critical for effectively detecting land-cover changes; that is, too long time period (i.e., 9 years) cannot accurately capture some land-cover changes such as the AP and SF in this research. Although deforestation – the conversion from PF to SF and AP – accounted for a large proportion of land-cover changes, the changes between SF and AP became more important than PF conversion, and required a short time period (i.e., 3 years here) for effectively reflecting their dynamics. Human-induced factors play important roles in deforestation, dynamic changes between AP and SF, and urbanization. |
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| Keywords: | deforestation secondary forest agropasture expansion TransAmazon multitemporal Landsat imagery human-induced factors |
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