Mapping forest degradation by fire in eastern Amazon: implications for carbon emission
Ane
A. C.
Alencar, University of Florida, aalencar@ufl.edu
(Presenting)
Understory fires represent one of the main sources of forest degradation in Eastern Amazon. Knowing the extent and location of recurrent forest fires is fundamental to determine the level of degradation of such forests, as well as their potential rates of recovery. In this study we investigate the historical contribution of subsequent fires in decreasing forest biomass, changing fire regime and increasing carbon emission. This work is based on the mapping of forest fire scars for consecutive Landsat scenes from the past 2 decades, chosen to include dry and wet years and to capture the influence of phenomena such as El Nino. Preliminary results indicate that about half of the standing forests in the study areas were burned in the past 20 years. Several in which were burned consecutive times interrupting the recovery of the natural vegetation and having major influence on unbalancing carbon uptake. In the future these scars will be used to derive the set of conditions in which the fires occurred, generating a logistic function for each of the regions. These derived relationships will allow to (1) develop a predictive model that explains the spatial and temporal distribution of forest fires for other areas in the region that have similar drought patterns and vegetation structure; (2) indicate the areas under high risk for future fires; and (3) simulate future fire scenarios.
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