Tropical forest cover dynamics for Latin America using Earth observation data: a review covering the continental, regional, and local scale

Abstract

The tropical forest cover has varied greatly over the last few decades. The rapid advance of agricultural crops and illegal clearings in natural areas has resulted in the conversion of the majority of the world's forest into desolated patches. Although rates of deforestation have decreased compared to previous years, forest loss still remains a crucial concern. Latest studies conducted on a global scale identified the Latin American continent as one of the regions exhibiting the highest rates of deforestation in the world. The dynamics of forests over the past 40 years has attracted numerous remote-sensing-based studies to monitor forest loss, analyse patterns, and understand the drivers of land conversion. This review article provides a comprehensive overview of the remote-sensing-based studies of tropical forest dynamics in Latin America. Following an introduction with respect to global forest mapping products, a general outline of tropical forest ecoregions and drivers of deforestation in Latin America is provided. Subsequently, a review and categorization of the existing studies is presented, where focus is laid on selected sensors and data analysis methodologies apply. Furthermore, a case study for the whole of Paraguay is presented; Paraguay is a region which contains highly diverse ecosystems that have been ravaged as a result of deforestation over the past 40 years. The main results, challenges, and future needs are discussed.

Monitoring long-term forest dynamics with scarce data: a multi-date classification implementation in the Ecuadorian Amazon

“…Forest dynamics in the complex and vulnerable regions of the Tropical Andes are still underresearched considering remote sensing data analyses (Da Ponte et al, 2015;Oliveras, Anderson, & Malhi, 2014). To the best of our knowledge, this was the first study of its kind that specifically focused on the challenges related to scarce data and the poor signal-to-noise ratio in a long time series for automated forest change analyses in the Tropical Andes.…”

“…Monitoring forest dynamics in the Tropical Andes, therefore, plays a key role for informing policymakers and resource managers in their decisionmaking processes over the next few years (Angelsen & Wertz-Kanounnikoff, 2008;De Koning et al, 2011). While lowland tropical forests have been well researched, closing the remaining knowledge gaps on forest dynamics in Andean tropical forests is of prime importance (Armenteras, María, Rodríguez, & Retana, 2017;Da Ponte et al, 2015;Oliveira, Eller, Bittencourt, & Mulligan, 2014;Spracklen & Righelato, 2014).…”

Combining global land cover datasets to quantify agricultural expansion into forests in Latin America: Limitations and challenges

“…The reason for this choice was that these datasets provide the highest available spatial resolution (c. 30 m) amongst currently available global datasets, while retaining overall accuracies over 80% [16,19–21]. The data are also relatively recent: GFC provides annual data 2001–2014, and GlobeLand30-2010 is for a single year around 2010, permitting attribution of post-forest loss land cover for the first decade of the 21 st century.…”

Native forests' destruction and illegal logging: the Argentinean case during the 1998-2016 period

“…Según el Panel Intergubernamental para el Cambio Climático realizado en 2014, el 4,3% de la deforestación mundial ocurre en Argentina (ARANDA, 2015), un país que además fue considerado por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura como el noveno -sobre un total de 234-que más área boscosa perdió entre 2010 y 2015 (FAO, 2015;DIARIO CLARÍN, 2015). Investigaciones académicas sostienen que durante las últimas décadas Argentina ha sido el segundo país de América Latina y el Caribe más desmontado en valores absolutos -después de Brasil-, y también el segundo de la región con tasas más altas de deforestación anual (2,31%) -después de Chile- (DA PONTE et al, 2015;ARMENTERAS et al, 2017). De continuar esta tendencia, los bosques nativos desaparecerían del país a finales de este siglo (DIARIO CLARÍN, 2015).…”