Polarimetric Responses and Scattering Mechanisms of Tropical Forests in the Brazilian Amazon

This chapter discusses the polarimetric responses of PALSAR (L-band) data and scattering mechanisms of some tropical forest typologies based on target decomposition. The fundamentals of polarimetric theory related to both SAR topics under development are summarized. For representation of polarimetric signatures, the cross-section of the forest target (σ) was plotted on a bi-dimensional graphic as a function of the orientation angle, ellipticity angle and the intensity of co-polar components of the radar signal. The analysis of scattering mechanisms was done by the association of entropy and mean alpha angle values of each sample, plotted in a bi-dimensional classification space. This study improves the understanding of the interaction mechanisms between L-band PALSAR signals and structural parameters, supporting the forest inventory in the Brazilian Amazon region

Efetividade de uma iniciativa de manejo para contenção da exploração florestal ilegal em um Projeto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável em Anapu, Pará.

A pressão por áreas florestais a serem exploradas é constante na Amazônia. Projetos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável (PDS) constituem uma modalidade de assentamento rural com objetivos sociais e ambientais, tendo o manejo florestal sustentável como alternativa para geração de renda. Utilizando a metodologia de ?Detecção de exploração madeireira em tempo quase real? (DETEX), desenvolvida pelo Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), este estudo analisou a ocorrência de exploração florestal licenciada e não autorizada no PDS Virola-Jatobá (PDS-VJ), município de Anapu, Pará, no período de 1999 a 2016. Foram identificadas alterações não autorizadas em 18.519 ha, sendo que 92% desta alteração ocorreram anteriormente a 2004, quando houve o assentamento das famílias, e outros 4,9% ocorreram quando o plano de manejo conduzido pela associação local não havia iniciado ou estava interrompido. Os resultados comprovam a assertividade das técnicas utilizadas, embora limitadas pela resolução espacial das imagens Landsat. O PDS-VJ, apesar de ainda não ter sido eficaz na consolidação de meios de vida sustentáveis, tem no manejo florestal uma alternativa que se mostrou promissora na contenção da exploração florestal não autorizada, pois apenas 3,1% das alterações ilegais observadas ao longo de 18 anos ocorreram durante sua vigência

Vulnerabilidade e integridade de padrões de uso e cobertura da terra na Área de Endemismo Tapajós entre 2004 a 2012.

This paper analyzes the transition process of land use and land cover classes in the Tapajós area of endemism (AE) from 2004 to 2012. Using data from mapping carried out by the TerraClass project, and based on transition matrices, vulnerability, land usage and coverage were estimated. From the detailed transition matrix, we calculated net changes, gains, losses, persistence and, we can identify the vulnerability and the integrity of these classes. The Forest class was most sensitive to the changes and most fragile and susceptible to transitions. The Secondary Vegetation class presented high values of net persistence and the Class of Annual Agriculture presented high persistence. The Pasture class presented high susceptibility to loss of area to other classes. The Forest class of Tapajós AE was the most vulnerable to loss, change of use and coverage, with negative net persistence of 0.05. Secondary vegetation was characterized as a stable and growing class, with great potential for stabilization and permanence. Despite suffering from migration processes, Secondary Vegetation presented a positive growth of 1.63%, indicating the presence of successional sites and signs of recovery of deforested areas. The Annual Agriculture presented significant gains, mainly from the pasture areas, with 1.43% persistence, being configured as the class of greater integrity and tendency to extend its area. The conversion to pasture has been one of the main elements associated with deforestation in the region. The Pasture class was also considered a vulnerable class to the processes of change, reaching 0.15% of persistence

Dinâmica das áreas de reflorestamento no município de Paragominas, Estado do Pará, considerando dados temporais do projeto TerraClass.

The municipality of Paragominas is considered a model among the municipalities of the "Legal Amazon", being the inspiration for the program "Municipios verdes", because it was through him and other public policies that the municipality managed to leave the list of municipalities that more Deforested and has been showing an expansion of reforestation practice. This study aims to analyze the dynamics of land use and occupation in the municipality of Paragominas, from 2008 to 2014, with emphasis on reforested areas in the municipality, using maps with land use and land cover data derived from remote sensing and Geoprocessing. The results indicated that although Paragominas faced an apparent consolidated situation in relation to the dynamics of land use, it continues to suffer a huge loss of forest resources. However, this municipality also showed a high conversion of pasture fields to agriculture, forest plantations or regrowth areas. Despite being a region apparently consolidated in terms of space exploration, Paragominas continues to suffer a great loss of forest resources, which can be seen in the gradual increase of the areas of use, the changes in the areas destined to reforestation projects came from the increase of the planted areas And the diversity of plant species

Detecção de padrões espaciais ligados à exploração florestal madeireira na Amazônia Legal: o caso da COOMFLONA, na Floresta Nacional do Tapajós.

For the protection of Amazon forest remnants, it is fundamental to know how the processes of forest exploitation occur. In this sense, it is necessary to formulate methodologies that aim at the optimization and accuracy of the mappings related to the selective cutting of forest individuals for commercial purposes. Thus, this work presents the results obtained through the application of the mapping methodology developed in DETEX project, allied to geotechnology and geostatistical methods, aiming at the identification of forest exploitation patterns related to wood selective cutting in COOMFLONA of 2013, 2014 and 2015. According to the results, logging began in 2013 with the installation of storage and infrastructure yards in the north of the area, demonstrating that the applied technique was effective in mapping the area''''''''s exploration dynamics. Subsequently, the infrastructure was installed towards the south of the area, followed by exploration. Finally, in 2015 one can see that the exploration activities were concentrated in the south of the area. During the analyzed period, results related to the spatial autocorrelation values of the Moran Local Index, as well as the surface map of forest exploitation density by interpolation by the Kernel method, showed an intense dynamics related to the implantation of storage yards and road infrastructure of forest exploitation

Índice texturais das áreas de exploração florestal na FLONA do Tapajós (Pará), utilizando imagens de média resolução espacial fusionadas.

The Amazon Biome has a wide variety of ecosystems, such as: flooded forests, dry land, igapós, open fields, floodplains and cerrado. And for forest studies what has been used in the scientific field are several methods of satellites images classification based on textural characteristics. The texture characteristics are an important source of information for the analysis and interpretation process of products that are generated by optical sensors. In this work we show results obtained through the application of the mapping methodology developed by DETEX (Detection of Selective Logging) and the textural measures using a co-occurrence matrix, in the study area of FNT (Tapajós National Forest) in Pará, having as a temporal cut the years of 2014, before the forest exploitation and 2015, the year post logging. The results obtained from the fused images of the Landsat 8 satellite (Sensor OLI) demonstrated a relation between some textural variables obtained by the Haralick texture and the forest exploitation degree applied, measured by the remaining basal area (G - m²/ha) . Based on the results, it was possible to establish that before the logging the trees from the dominant extract were important in the detection result, whereas when some individuals (2015) were extracted, the dominant trees were fundamental for the verification of low impact logging activity in the fores

A confiabilidade do PRODES: estimativa da acurácia do mapeamento do desmatamento no estado Mato Grosso.

PRODES is completing almost thirty years of uninterrupted monitoring of clear-cut deforestation over the Brazilian Amazon. Until now, no estimate of its mapping accuracy has been made. In this sense, this article brings a first approximation of mapping accuracy estimation of PRODES deforested areas, taking as example the state of Mato Grosso for the year 2014. For this, a random sampling panel was constructed, stratified with two strata, the deforestation of 2014 and the remaining forest. The sample size was calculated using the binomial function. In addition, a web platform was built to evaluate the points drawn by three independent evaluators. The global accuracy of the mapping of deforestation for the state of Mato Grosso, for the year 2014 was 94.5%, and may vary between 92.4% and 96.5%, in the evaluated scenario there was no class discordance to be found. Regarding the Forest class, the user accuracy was 90.5% and the producer's accuracy was 88.4%, this imbalance between user accuracy and producer accuracy indicates that there is a tendency for the forest class area to be underestimated for this mapping, in this year

Land-use and land-cover mapping of the Brazilian cerrado based mainly on Landsat-8 satellite images.

The Brazilian Cerrado is one of the world´s biodiversity hotspot and hosts some of the most intensive agricultural activities for food production in the world. The objective of this study was to produce a land-use and land-cover (LULC) map of the Cerrado based on Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images. A set of 121 scenes from 2013 was processed using the image segmentation technique. The segments were exported in the shapefile format and interpreted visually in a geographical information system software using RGB/564 color composites. The following LULC classes were considered: annual croplands, perennial croplands, cultivated pasturelands, reforestation, mosaic of occupation, urban areas, mining areas, bare soil, forestlands, non-forestlands, water bodies, and non-identified (clouds and burned areas). The overall accuracy was estimated by an independent scientist with large experience in Cerrado´s image interpretation. The results showed that 43.4% of the study area (88.5 million hectares) were already converted into agricultural, urban and mining areas, 54.6% (111 million hectares) were still natural areas, and 1.9% (3.9 million hectares) was classified as non-identified. Cultivated pasturelands were the most representative land-use type (29.5%), followed by annual croplands (8.5%) and perennial croplands (3.1%). The overall accuracy of the final map was 80.2%.Título em português: Mapeamento de uso e cobertura de terras do cerrado com base principalmente em imagens do satélite Landsat-8

Land-use and land-cover mapping of the Brazilian cerrado based mainly on Landsat-8 satellite images.

The Brazilian Cerrado is one of the world´s biodiversity hotspot and hosts some of the most intensive agricultural activities for food production in the world. The objective of this study was to produce a land-use and land-cover (LULC) map of the Cerrado based on Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images. A set of 121 scenes from 2013 was processed using the image segmentation technique. The segments were exported in the shapefile format and interpreted visually in a geographical information system software using RGB/564 color composites. The following LULC classes were considered: annual croplands, perennial croplands, cultivated pasturelands, reforestation, mosaic of occupation, urban areas, mining areas, bare soil, forestlands, non-forestlands, water bodies, and non-identified (clouds and burned areas). The overall accuracy was estimated by an independent scientist with large experience in Cerrado´s image interpretation. The results showed that 43.4% of the study area (88.5 million hectares) were already converted into agricultural, urban and mining areas, 54.6% (111 million hectares) were still natural areas, and 1.9% (3.9 million hectares) was classified as non-identified. Cultivated pasturelands were the most representative land-use type (29.5%), followed by annual croplands (8.5%) and perennial croplands (3.1%). The overall accuracy of the final map was 80.2%.Título em português: Mapeamento de uso e cobertura de terras do cerrado com base principalmente em imagens do satélite Landsat-8

Feições de exploração florestal de impacto reduzido na Flona do Tapajós utilizando imagens Landsat e filtros texturais.

In the Amazon, the suitable of natural forests is recurring theme in the last years on the world, considering if the same has a huge potential of contribution in products and services. In this context, the reduced impact logging is fundamental in the biodiversity conservation and their forest feedstock sustainable use. Thus, to evaluate a mapping the reduced impact logging in the National forest of Tapajós, Para State, a quantity of information?s and Landsat8 - OLI series merged to orbit-points 227/062 was used to apply in the DETEX methodology (Selective logging Detection), to detect forest exploitation. The results showed significant relationships at use of coherence matrixes of gray levels based on texture characteristics related with remained basal area in fields regarded as reduced impact logging, notably to contrast, entropy, homogeneity and angular second moment texture variables, for the majority of them after the forest exploitation in the area. In addition, the longest filters windows size obtained significant statistical results, aligned with specialized literature about the theme. In this way, is recommended the use of methodology in areas with higher exploitation intensity than used in this study, in order to stablish comparisons and identify levels of intensity in forest exploitation distinc