MAPPING DEGRADED FOREST AREAS CAUSED BY FIRES DURING THE YEAR 2010 IN MATO GROSSO STATE, BRAZILIAN LEGAL AMAZON USING LANDSAT-5 TM FRACTION IMAGES

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the extent of burned forest in 2010 in Mato Grosso State, located in the southern Brazilian Amazon region. Landsat TM images were acquired over the 2010 dry season. Overall, the approach consisted on mapping burned areas over the entire study area and then overlaying it with the land cover types and biomass classes. Speciï¬ cally, the forest areas degraded by ï¬ res were mapped by combining the burned areas map and the forest map. The method to map burned areas was based on following procedure: (i) linear spectral mixing model applied to TM images to derive soil, vegetation and shade fraction images and (ii) the burned areas are identiï¬ ed and mapped from the shade fraction images. The forest/non forest map was derived from Hansen et al. (2013) dataset and the biomass map was derived from Baccini et al. (2015). The mapped burned areas were then distributed in the three land cover types, i.e., forest, non-forest (Cerrado and old deforestation), and deforested areas from 2001 to 2010. Our results showed that 22,633 km2 (32%) of forests in Mato Grosso were burned during the year 2010, likely degrading the forest ecosystem. In addition, 5,175 km2 (7%) of burning occurred in the deforested areas from 2001 to 2010 and 42,510 km2 (61%) occurred in the Cerrado and old deforestation areas. In addition the burned areas were distributed in the the biomass classes. These types of information are important for the carbon emission estimation.