Relationship between forest fragmentation patterns and deforestation: the case of the Brazilian Amazon

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is the result of social, economic, and political pressures and its rates swing accordingly. Deforestation can lead to forest fragmentation, which may mask other negative impacts. Forest fragmentation classes resulting from a Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) help to establish the spatial distribution of a fragmented landscape. However, the behavior of these classes and their association with deforestation has been little studied. To address this issue, we proposed the analyses of the diversity of fragmentation classes as an indicator of forest fragmentation trajectory over time. We used Shannon's diversity index and MSPA on land-use changes and vegetation cover data to identify the evolution of fragmented forest classes for the period 1985 - 2018. The diversity of the classes was obtained for each year using TraMineR. This value was compared with the cumulated deforestation rate from 1988 to 2018. A correlation analysis was carried out to establish the relationship between diversity of fragmentation classes and deforestation. During the studied period, all but one class of fragmentation increased. Diversity increased over the years with a mean of 0.41 ± 0.07 (range 0.27 to 0.50), even during periods of reduced deforestation. The high correlation between cumulated deforestation and diversity (R^2 = 0.98), indicated the impact on the fragmentation patterns. Specific actions are needed to reduce forest fragmentation beyond those to curb Amazon deforestation. Keywords: Landscape management, Monitoring and data collection, Research ID: 3480574

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Trejo, P., Azevedo-Ramos, C.
Format:	Document biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	FAO ; 2022
Online Access:	https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/cc4535en http://www.fao.org/3/cc4535en/cc4535en.pdf
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