Human pressure on the Brazilian Amazon forest

Abstract

The Brazilian Amazon harbors about one-third of the world’s tropical forests, an area covering some 4.1 million square kilometers. However, land-use conversion in the Brazilian Amazon is triggering forest loss and degradation and rapidly changing the regional landscape. FAO data reveal that Brazil accounted for approximately 42 percent of global net forest loss from 2000 to 2005; most of this deforestation occurred in the Brazilian Amazon. In response to public demand for forest conservation many stakeholders are attempting to reconcile economic development and conservation through initiatives that include forestry regulation, enforcement of environmental legislation, and the creation of protected areas. Given the rapid expansion of activities such as cattle ranching, agriculture, and logging, these initiatives must quickly target priority areas to be successful. This demands accurate and detailed information on the current state of Amazon forests and the pressures they face. Yet such information remains elusive. Despite advances such as satellite imaging, our understanding of the extent and degree of human activities in the Brazilian Amazon is only partial. Even deforestation (forest clear cutting) is not fully understood. Up to 1997, the Brazilian Space Agency (INPE) mapped deforested areas greater than 6.5 ha. Since then, INPE has improved mapping technique but it still misses deforested areas smaller than 3 ha. Identifying small deforestation plots and other indicators of incipient human activities in forests could flag areas at risk of increased deforestation and forest degradation. Pinpointing these areas at risk would provide strategic guidance for conservation and sustainable development in the region. But despite this potential, no comprehensive analysis that integrates such spatial data with other standard measures of forest condition yet exists to help conservation and development planners understand the true extent of human activities in the region. This report seeks to help fill this gap. It compiles and integrates geospatial information on various indicators to present a picture, roughly as of 2002, of the human pressure on forests in the Brazilian Amazon. Human pressure, for this report, is defined broadly as the presence of human activities that lead to forest loss and degradation.