Land Use Changes in the Teles Pires River Basin’s Amazon and Cerrado Biomes, Brazil, 1986–2020

Abstract

The Teles Pires River basin in Brazil’s center-west has recently expanded agricultural economic development at the expense of both the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah. We evaluated these changes occurring in this basin over the last 34 years. Maps were generated to determine changes in land use classifications between 1986, 1991, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2011, 2015, and 2020. The supervised classification of Landsat 5 and 8 images used the maximum likelihood algorithm. Satellite spatial data on land use downloaded from the United States Geological Survey were validated according to 1477 locations, where our research team categorized land use in the field during 2020. The growth in agricultural crops (+643%) and pasture (+250%) from 1986 to 2020 were detrimental to natural areas, such as the rainforest and savannah. The percentage increase in the agricultural areas between the evaluated years peaked around 1996 and stabilized in 2020 at 40% of the Teles Pires River basin’s land area. Land use change patterns were related to political/economic events in Brazil, forest/pasture conversions until 2011, and the change from pasture to crops from 2011 to 2020. There was greater intensity in the changes in the upper Teles Pires River basin toward the south, which expanded northward over time. Sustainable agricultural intensification is needed in such stabilized, frontier areas.