Introduction

Deforestation refers to the removal of any forest with or without the removed trees getting replanted, and given the threat climate change poses to the world, it is crucial that we keep track of global deforestation to manage our carbon footprint as trees act as a carbon sink. According to the World Resources Institute, global tropical primary deforestation in 2023 was 3.74 million hectares, with 0.69 million of that coming from fire-related losses. (World Resources Institute, 2024)

This study is of the Amazon Rainforest in South America, and in 2023, the countries with the largest recorded deforestation of tropical primary forests were Brazil (1.14 m), Bolivia (0.49 m), Peru (0.15 m), and Colombia (0.07 m). These figures show that, compared to 2022, the Amazon saw a decrease of 39% in primary forest loss in 2023, demonstrating that the plans the Brazilian president is implementing are pushing the country in the right direction. (World Resources Institute, 2024)

This report will focus on how human infrastructure in an area in the Brazilian state of Para is influencing deforestation, which between 2000 and 2019 lost 7.2 million hectares of forest. I aim to answer why this is happening and demonstrate how remote sensing can help in tracking deforestation.

Why is the rainforest important?

Rainforests have the highest biodiversity of any other region on Earth. According to Green Peace, there are over 3 million species in the Amazon, including one-third of all tropical trees that exist on Earth. (Thomson, 2020) According to a report by IPBEs, “around 1 million species already face extinction,” putting the whole ecosystem at risk as a direct result of human deforestation. (IPBES, 2019)

Methodology

To assess this, I have used data from NASA’s Landsat programme from different years to see the visible difference in deforestation in a region of the Amazon Rainforest. Using these images, I used ArcGIS to collate this data and add other data sets to represent deforestation better.

I gathered a collection of images from the NASA Landsat programme and imported them into ArcGIS. I then clipped (clip raster) around the different images so it would only show my area of interest.

To identify the areas of deforestation, I used a global deforestation data set from the Remote Sensing and GIS Software Library. I extracted further deforestation data from Landsat images of the Amazon. I used a threshold of 0 when extracting this information, as I believed it was the best one to differentiate the different vegetation types on the images.

For indigenous areas, roads, railways, and waterways, I used data from TerraBrasilis.

If I were to do this project again, I would look deeper into other ways of representing my data, such as having two side-by-side comparisons of different time periods of deforestation in the Amazon. I would also add another figure showing the deforestation around the section I am focusing on, as this will give a better overview of the region.

Results

Figure 1: Map showing the deforestation of a region of the Amazon Rainforest

Figure 1 demonstrates the deforestation before and after 2008. It is visible that there was more deforestation before 2008, which would make sense as there has been a longer period of time for deforestation to occur. There is a clear indication of deforestation along a line running north to south, with large areas of deforestation occurring along this established path from 2008 to 2021 and before. Furthermore, some areas of deforestation are occurring far away from the main concentration, which could indicate that selective logging is taking place. Selective logging is the removal of the most valuable trees from an area of forest, which reduces biodiversity and enhances the growth of weeds on the forest floor.

I can also see that most of the deforestation that occurred after 2008 took place from 2019 onwards. This correlates to when the region was experiencing many wildfires that burned down large areas of forest. (Purdue University, 2020)

Figure 2: Infrastructure around my study area of the Amazon

Figure 2 shows that a large highway (Highway 163) passes through the area with no major navigable waterways. The highest concentration of deforestation occurs around and along this highway, as easy accessibility to the forests allows for a quicker and cheaper way of extracting the natural resources to be sold. Furthermore, this positive aspect of having a highway is exacerbated by the economic situation of the country, which is pushing more and more people to the rainforests to make a living.

Figure 3: Image of the Paved Highway 163. Image from Google Maps

In Figure 3, you can see large industrial trucks using these roads for the transportation of goods. An important detail about Figure 3 is that Highway 163 is a paved road, giving heavier, larger vehicles a reliable route to transport goods from the rainforests and from the farms that are replacing them.

Figure 4: Graph showing the yearly deforestation in the area seen in Figure 1.

The deforestation data represented in Figure 4 demonstrates that the area of forest that is lost each year since 2008 in my studied region fluctuates significantly. However, we can see that the overall trend line demonstrates a strong correlation between years and areas of deforestation. Furthermore, Figure 2 shows that the years 2020 and 2021 were the highest since 2008. The period from 2019 to 2021 was during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential term, which saw a major increase in deforestation around the country. (Watson, 2022) This shows that there is a strong correlation between deforestation and the country’s leadership, proving people in power do have the ability to make significant changes.

Figure 5: The figure shows the relation of deforestation to indigenous areas in the Amazon.

The top right section of Figure 5 demonstrates that loggers are respecting the boundaries and rules on the removal of trees in this area, as little to no deforestation is taking place in the area.

All of these pieces of data not only show that designated protected areas of forest in the Brazilian Amazon are working to stop deforestation but also prove that economic development in the region will come, for the most part, at the cost of the rainforest. This is because, to unlock large areas of Brazil, infrastructure like roads and highways will have to be built to facilitate an economic transition.

Discussion

The region I have studied lies roughly 1,000 km away from the ocean, and as mentioned in “Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon” by Andrea Cattaneo, “high transportation costs between the Amazon and the rest of the country lead to high agricultural input costs and limiting-regional trade” (Cattaneo, 2001). This is one of the reasons the area I have been looking at has a large amount of deforestation, as it is closer to the coast than many other regions of the Amazon and is starting to get infrastructure investments, as can be seen in Figure 2, showing the network of roads as human hold on the forest spreads.

When using other sources of data, like Google Maps, I can see that most of the deforestation in the area I have studied, mainly around the infrastructure that has been built, is to make way for farmland for pastoral farming to feed the world’s increasing appetite for meat. (Statista, 2021)

In “The Future of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon” (Kathryn R. Kirby, 2005), the report concluded by recommending a few steps to discourage deforestation:

• Curtail the construction of new paved roads and highways until the environmental costs of such a development are properly studied.
• Establish more protected areas around the Amazon.
• Improve relationships with indigenous people, as their lands cover 22.5% of the Amazon.
• Promote further research into how different sets of environmental and socio-economic conditions affect deforestation.

The data that I have supports all of these claims, particularly the construction of new roads, the establishment of protected areas, and working closer with the indigenous populations. We have seen that deforestation has mostly occurred along Highway 163 (Figure 2) and that the loggers have been avoiding protected indigenous areas (Figure 4). This shows that the plans suggested in 2005 work and therefore should be adopted by the current government of Brazil.

The future of the Amazon Rainforest looks uncertain. Current President Lulu da Silva has been at the forefront of a movement that has seen a 50% reduction in deforestation over the past year and a 73% reduction in tree loss in indigenous areas. (Watts, 2024) His administration announced its plan to end deforestation by 2030, which follows international pledges signed in 2021 in Glasgow. (Grattan, 2023), (AlJazeera, 2023)

Conclusion

During this study, I found that, for the most part, loggers stick to logging trees that are out of both Indigenous and parkland areas, showing that there is hope that extra protected areas in the region will help reduce the amount of deforestation that takes place. Furthermore, it is clear that deforestation is mostly concentrated along established infrastructure like highways, where it is easier to access the forests.

References

AlJazeera, 2023. Brazil’s President Lula unveils plan to end deforestation by 2030, Doha: AlJazeera.

Cattaneo, A., 2001. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: Comparing the Impacts of Macroeconomic Shocks, Land Tenure, and Technological Change.. Land Economics, 77(2), pp. 219-240.

Grattan, S., 2023. World far off track on pledges to end deforestation by 2030 – report, London: Reuters.

IPBES, 2019. The global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, Bonn: IPBES.

Kathryn R. Kirby, W. F. L. A. K. A. G. S. P. M. F. S. B. E. M. V. C. d. C., 2005. The future of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Futueres, 38(4), pp. 432-453.

Statista, 2021. Meat consumption worldwide from 1990 to 2021, by meat type*. [Online]
Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/274522/global-per-capita-consumption-of-meat/
[Accessed 13 May 2024].

Thomson, A., 2020. Biodiversity and the Amazon Rainforest, Amsterdam: GreenPeace.

Watson, K., 2022. Jair Bolsonaro: The Amazon and why world is watching Brazil’s election, London: BBC News.

Watts, J., 2024. Optimism dries up in Amazon as Lula drifts from climate priorities, London: The Guardian.

World Resources Institute, 2024. Forest Pulse: The Latest on the World’s Forests, s.l.: World Resources Institute.