Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Artigo Acesso aberto Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

BIBTEX RIS

Long-term forest degradation surpasses deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

2020; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Volume: 369; Issue: 6509 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1126/science.abb3021

1095-9203

Eraldo Aparecido Trondoli Matricardi, David L. Skole, Olívia Bueno da Costa, Marcos Antônio Pedlowski, Jay H. Samek, Éder Pereira Miguel,

Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Although deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon are well known, the extent of the area affected by forest degradation is a notable data gap, with implications for conservation biology, carbon cycle science, and international policy. We generated a long-term spatially quantified assessment of forest degradation for the entire Brazilian Amazon from 1992 to 2014. We measured and mapped the full range of activities that degrade forests and evaluated the relationship with deforestation. From 1992 to 2014, the total area of degraded forest was 337,427 square kilometers (km2), compared with 308,311 km2 that were deforested. Forest degradation is a separate and increasing form of forest disturbance, and the area affected is now greater than that due to deforestation.