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Serra do Divisor National Park: a protected area under threat in the south-western Brazilian Amazon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2022

Diogo Mitsuru Koga*
Affiliation:
Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Gestão de Áreas Protegidas na Amazônia, Manaus, AM, CEP 69067-375, Brazil
Irving Foster Brown
Affiliation:
Woodwell Climate Research Center, 149 Woods Hole Rd, Falmouth, MA 02540, USA Universidade Federal do Acre, Geoprocessing Laboratory Applied to the Environment – LabGAMA, Cruzeiro do Sul, AC, CEP 69980-000, Brazil
Philip M Fearnside
Affiliation:
Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Gestão de Áreas Protegidas na Amazônia, Manaus, AM, CEP 69067-375, Brazil
David S Salisbury
Affiliation:
University of Richmond, Department of Geography and the Environment, Westhampton Way, Richmond, VA 23173, USA
Sonaira Souza da Silva
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Acre, Geoprocessing Laboratory Applied to the Environment – LabGAMA, Cruzeiro do Sul, AC, CEP 69980-000, Brazil
*
Author for Correspondence: Diogo Mitsuru Koga, Email: diogomkoga@hotmail.com
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Summary

Protected areas have numerous roles (such as biodiversity preservation, the development of scientific research and the sustainable use of natural resources), but they are under threat from political and economic forces. The 837 000-ha Serra do Divisor National Park (SDNP) in the south-western Brazilian Amazon combines the conservation of natural resources and the maintenance of the productive activities of c. 400 resident families. The Brazilian and Peruvian governments have proposed a road linking Acre (Brazil) to Ucayali (Peru) that would bisect the SDNP. Another threat to the SDNP is a bill proposing its downgrading to an ‘environmental protection area’. This study aims to map the land cover of the SDNP and its surroundings from 1988 to 2018 and to analyse the dynamics of land-use change. Analysis of Landsat satellite images with supervised classification using the MaxVer algorithm show that, during the 30-year period, pasture showed the highest absolute land-cover gain, with 1986 ha in the interior and 7661 ha along the periphery of the SDNP. Only 1% of the park’s primary forest was lost by 2018, but the proposed road and potential downgrading may result in accelerated deforestation and forest degradation in the near future.

Information

Type
Research Paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Foundation for Environmental Conservation
Figure 0

Fig. 1. Location and limits of Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park.

Figure 1

Fig. 2. Land use and land cover in 1988, 2003 and 2018 in and around the Serra do Divisor National Park.

Figure 2

Table 1. Transition matrices of land use and land cover for the years 1988, 2003 and 2018 and the transitions between classes in the periods 1988–2003 and 2003–2018 within the Serra do Divisor National Park.

Figure 3

Table 2. Transition matrices of land use and land cover for the years 1988, 2003 and 2018 and the transitions between classes in the periods 1988–2003 and 2003–2018 in the buffer zone of the Serra do Divisor National Park.

Figure 4

Fig. 3. Changes in land use and land cover between 1988 and 2018 in and around the Serra do Divisor National Park, Marechal Thaumaturgo region.

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