Colman, Carina Barbosa, Guerra, Angélica, Almagro, André, de Oliveira Roque, Fabio, Rosa, Isabel M.D., Fernandes, Geraldo Wilson, and Oliveira, Paulo Tarso S. (2024) Modeling the Brazilian Cerrado land use change highlights the need to account for private property sizes for biodiversity conservation. Scientific Reports, 14. 4559.

Preview

PDF (Published Version) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (8MB) | Preview

Abstract

Simulating future land use changes can be an important tool to support decision-making, especially in areas that are experiencing rapid anthropogenic pressure, such as the Cerrado–Brazilian savanna. Here we used a spatially-explicit model to identify the main drivers of native vegetation loss in the Cerrado and then extrapolate this loss for 2050 and 2070. We also analyzed the role of property size in complex Brazilian environmental laws in determining different outcomes of these projections. Our results show that distance to rivers, roads, and cities, agricultural potential, permanent and annual crop agriculture, and cattle led to observed/historical loss of vegetation, while protected areas prevented such loss. Assuming full adoption of the current Forest Code, the Cerrado may lose 26.5 million ha (± 11.8 95% C.I.) of native vegetation by 2050 and 30.6 million ha (± 12.8 95% C.I.) by 2070, and this loss shall occur mainly within large properties. In terms of reconciling conservation and agricultural production, we recommend that public policies focus primarily on large farms, such as protecting 30% of the area of properties larger than 2500 ha, which would avoid a loss of more than 4.1 million hectares of native vegetation, corresponding to 13% of the predicted loss by 2070.

Item ID:	85343
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2045-2322
Copyright Information:	Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Date Deposited:	06 May 2025 00:51
FoR Codes:	41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 50% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410404 Environmental management @ 50%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180601 Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems @ 100%
	More Statistics