Assessing the Wall-To-Wall Spatial and Qualitative Dynamics of the Brazilian Pasturelands, between 2010 and 2018, Based on the Analysis of the Landsat Data Archive

Abstract

The Brazilian livestock is predominantly extensive, with approximately 90% of the production being sustained on pasture, which occupies around 20% of the territory. In the current climate change scenario and where cropland is becoming a limited resource, there is a growing need for a more efficient land use and occupation. It is estimated that more than half of the Brazilian pastures have some level of degradation; however there is still no mapping of the quality of pastures on a national scale. In this study, we mapped and evaluated the spatio-temporal dynamics of pasture quality in Brazil, between 2010 and 2018, considering three classes of degradation: Absent (D0), Intermediate (D1), and Severe (D2). There was no variation in the total area occupied by pastures in the evaluated period, in spite of the accentuated spatial dynamics, with a retraction in the center-south and expansion to the north, over areas of ​​native vegetation. The percentage of non-degraded pastures increased ~12%, due to the recovery of degraded areas and the emergence of new pasture areas as a result of the prevailing spatial dynamics. However, about 44 Mha of the pasture area is currently severely degraded. The dynamics in pasture quality were not homogeneous in property size classes. We observed that in the approximately 2.68 million properties with livestock activity, the proportion with quality gains was twice as low in small properties compared to large ones, and the proportion with losses was three times greater, showing an increase in inequality between properties with more and less resources (large and small, respectively). The areas occupied by pastures in Brazil present an unique opportunity to increase livestock production and make available areas for agriculture, without the need for new deforestation in the coming decades.

Long-Term Landsat-Based Monthly Burned Area Dataset for the Brazilian Biomes Using Deep Learning

“…Accelerated rates of land use change in the past four decades (36 years) have been responsible for the conversion of 0.82 million km 2 of Brazilian native vegetation [50], which represent about half of the cumulative area burned in Brazil in the same period (1.67 million km 2 ). Out of all land uses, pasture fields are dominant in Brazil [43,88], and an important source of ignition [75,79], constituting nearly one-third (30%) of the burned area. Another relevant proportion (57%) of the burned area affected fire-dependent native vegetations (savannas and grasslands), whose source of ignition was their natural responses to climate and the increase in escaped human ignition from land uses.…”