Assessing deforestation related carbon emission in the Brazilian Savanna based on moderate resolution imagery

Author

Ferreira, Nilson Clementino ; Ferreira, Laerte Guimarães ; Ferreira, Manuel Eduardo ; Bustamante, Mercedes ; Ometto, Jean

Author_Institution

Image Process. & GIS Lab., Fed. Univ. of Goias, Goias, Brazil

fYear

2011

fDate

24-29 July 2011

Firstpage

748

Lastpage

751

Abstract

The Brazilian Cerrado is the second largest biome in South America, comprising an area of approximately 2 million km" or 24% of the Brazilian territory. In spite of its important role in carbon fluxes and storage, this biome has been facing intensive, fast-pace, agro-pastoral land use, as the occurrence of favorable topography and soils of easy management enabled highly-mechanized, rainfed grain and cattle meat productions for exportation. This paper presents an overview of a methodological approach for assessing carbon emission caused by deforestation in the Brazilian Cerrado biome, based on multi-temporal and multi-thematic analysis. Preliminary results, based on the 250m Terra-MODIS normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images, suggest that about 45 million tons of carbon were emitted due to the 2008 2009 clearings in Cerrado biome.

Keywords

climate mitigation; geophysical image processing; soil; terrain mapping; topography (Earth); vegetation mapping; Brazilian Cerrado biome; Brazilian savanna; Brazilian territory; MODIS vegetation indices; South America; Terra- MODIS normalized difference vegetation index images; agropastoral land use; carbon emission; carbon fluxes; carbon storage; cattle meat productions; moderate resolution imagery; multitemporal analysis; multithematic analysis; rainfed grain; soils; Carbon; Carbon dioxide; Ecosystems; Indexes; MODIS; Soil; Vegetation mapping; Brazilian Cerrado; MODIS vegetation indices; carbon emission; deforestation;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2011 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Vancouver, BC

ISSN

2153-6996

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1003-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2011.6049238

Filename

6049238