COMBINING SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING AND CENSUS DATA TO QUANTIFY AGRICULTURAL LAND USE CHANGE IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON

Abstract

As pasture and cropland have replaced forest cover in the Brazilian Amazon, the creation of spatial explicit time series of land use is an important concern in modeling land change. Despite much progress in mapping deforestation using satellite remotely sensed data, little is known about the distribution of agricultural land uses that replace forest cover in the Brazilian Amazon.In this paper we present a methodology to integrate satellite remote sensing and census data over 1996/1997 and 2006/2007 periods. Our resulting land use maps show the distribution and proportion of pasture as well as, temporary and permanent agriculture across the region. More than show an overall expansion of the total agricultural area between 1997 and 2007, our mapped land use time series aim to describe the effects of land use changes across the region over one decade.