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Assessment of the effect of landowner type on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon using remote sensing data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2022

Ana IR Cabral Open the ORCID record for Ana IR Cabral [Opens in a new window] ,
Anne Elisabeth Laques Open the ORCID record for Anne Elisabeth Laques [Opens in a new window]  and
Carlos Hiroo Saito Open the ORCID record for Carlos Hiroo Saito [Opens in a new window]
Ana IR Cabral*
Affiliation:
Forest Research Center (CEF), School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal
Anne Elisabeth Laques
Affiliation:
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), 228 UMR ESPACE-DEV, 500 rue Jean-François Breton, 34093 Montpellier cedex 5, France
Carlos Hiroo Saito
Affiliation:
Center for Sustainable Development and Department of Ecology/Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil
*
Author for correspondence: Dr Ana IR Cabral, Email: anaicabral@isa.ulisboa.pt
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Summary

The Brazilian Legal Amazon contains important reservoirs of forest that are threatened by stakeholders’ behaviour. The Cadastro Ambiental Rural (CAR; Rural Environmental Registry) database was used to define the limits and classes of landowner according to private property size. For each class, we identified the annual forest-cover/cover-loss profile at 2-year intervals from 2000 to 2020 based on Brazilian Annual Land Use and Land Cover Mapping Project (MapBiomas) and Program for Deforestation Monitoring (PRODES) data. The analysis revealed that very large landowners dominate the CAR-registered area and that deforestation is influenced by landowner type. The cumulative contributions to deforestation were 2 916 245.96, 1 234 216.79, 2 871 400.36, 2 805 058.62 and 2 637 485.60 ha for very large landowners, large landowners, medium landowners, small landowners and very small landowners, respectively. Very large landowners (1.7% of the total number of properties) had more forest on their properties but caused the greatest amount of deforestation in total, often associated with agribusiness. Small and very small landowners were more numerous (21.0% and 68.3% of the total number of properties, respectively), but they owned a small total area and contributed less to total deforestation. Property size and landownership asymmetry should be considered in deforestation control policies and commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.

Keywords

deforestationMapBiomasPRODESremote sensingRural Environmental Registry (CAR)
Type
Research Paper
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 2022 , pp. 225 - 233
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Foundation for Environmental Conservation

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