[H-TT18] Environmental Remote Sensing

[HTT18-P03] Land use and land cover change of illegal settlements by landless peasants in the Brazilian Amazon

*Sayaka Yoshikawa^1,3, Kanae Ishimaru² (1.Ibaraki university , 2.Fukui Prefectural University, 3.Tokyo institute of technology)

Keywords:Amazon deforestation, Agrarian settlements by landless peasants, Lacunarity Index

In Legal Amazon, land use and land cover changes have been reported to occur over large areas due to the introduction of large-scale mechanized agriculture, extensive cattle ranching and uncontrolled slash-and-burn cultivation since the 1980s. Around the same time, movements which landless peasants (or poor people) settle into abandoned land have been very active in Brazil. In many cases, these people lack agricultural experiences to yield sufficient production for livelihoods. Thus, it leads to abandon the land and repeat forest clearance. In this study, we specifically aimed at clarifying changes in land use and land cover using ground observation data, remote sensing (Geo-Eye-1) data and GIS techniques. We focus on two different settlements: established settlement (30 years) and productive settlement (14 years). These settlements were located at Santa Barbará province, about 40 km northeast from the center of Belém, the Pará state capital, in the northern part of Brazil. This research is motivated by the following three questions: i) How much forest areas have disappeared due to the activities of landless peasants? ii) Can they get compliance with Brazilian Forest Code? iii) How much are agricultural lands developed? For the answering these questions, we clarified changes in land use and land cover under five approaches which employs original spectral data and lacunarity index.