A protocol for expedite and effective retrieval of land conversion information in savanna environments

The production of land use and land conversion maps has become a priority information for public policies actions and environmental monitoring. In Brazil, the elaboration of these maps (with moderate scale/resolution) has been driven by the need to evaluate human occupation dynamics, principally in the Amazon and savanna (or Cerrado) biomes. In order to enable a more precise and systematic monitoring for the savanna region (which will support, for example, the deforestation, economic and greenhouse gases expansion models), this study aims to present a basic protocol for mapping this biome (in three thematic classes: Remnant vegetation, Converted areas and Burned areas), taking into consideration computational time, budget issues, as well as accuracy and precision of the area mapped (including error estimates). Our results suggest the possibility to produce low cost expedite maps for the entire Cerrado, with a global accuracy above 80% (in some scenes near to 100%), especially for both the Remnant vegetation and Converted areas.