The relationship between forest fire and deforestation in the southeast Atlantic rainforest.

Given the scarcity of studies relating fire to deforestation in the Atlantic Forest and great economic and ecological importances of this biome, this work aimed to investigate this relationship in the Atlantic Forest of the State of São Paulo, trying to answer whether deforestation is related to fire events in up to three years, if there are regions most affected by this relationship and what land use and land cover predominates after fire and deforestation in these areas. The study was carried out in Evergreen Forest and Semideciduous Seasonal, along the time series from 2000 to 2019 using the MapBiomas Project database to survey deforested and burned sites with moderate to high severity fires. Burning positively influenced deforestation in EGF in eight of 19 years studied (2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009, 2013 and 2015), while only for three years in the SSF. Burning followed by deforestation corresponded to only 3.2% of the total deforestation, located mainly in the eastern region of the state with the highest density in the EGF. Most of these areas have been converted to agriculture. This study provides the first indication that, generally, fire is not a driver of deforestation in the southeast Atlantic Forest.

Increased burned area in the Pantanal over the past two decades.

Wildfires are behaving differently now compared to other time in history in relation to frequency, intensity and affected ecosystems. In Brazil, unprecedented fires are being experienced in the last decade. Thus, to prevent and minimize similar disasters, we must better understand the natural and human drivers of such extreme events. The Brazilian Pantanal is the largest contiguous wetland in the world and a complex environmental system. In 2020, Pantanal experienced catastrophic wildfires due to the synergy between climate, inadequate fire management strategies and weak environmental regulations. In this study, we analyzed recent patterns and changes in fire behavior across the Pantanal based on land use and cover (LULC) classes. The inter-annual variability of the fire and land cover changes between 2000 and 2021 was assessed using BA from MCD64A1 V.6 product and LULC data from Landsat satellite. Our work reveals that fires in the Pantanal over the last two decades tended to occur more frequently in grassland than in others land cover types, but the 2020 fires have preferentially burned forest regions. Large fire patches are more frequent in forest and grasslands; in contrast, croplands exhibit small patches. The results highlight that a broad scale analysis does not reflect distinct localized patterns, thus stratified and refined studies are required. Our work contributes as a first step to disentangling the role of anthropogenic-related drivers, namely LULC changes, in shaping the fire regime in the Pantanal biome. This is crucial not only to predict future fire activity but also to guide appropriated fire management in the region.

Wealth and Education Influences on Spatial Pattern of Tree Planting in a Tropical Metropolis in Brazil.

Green infrastructure, and specifically urban afforestation, is one of the most important activities of city management today, because of the multitude of ecosystem services it provides. The pattern of tree planting in urban areas is related to age, ethnicity, education, and household income. Unfortunately, this issue has not been evaluated, nor has it received significant subsidized governmental actions, funding, study, or public policies in large tropical cities in developing countries. Thus, we aimed to investigate if there was a pattern of urban afforestation related by socio-territorial inequalities, in the city of São Paulo, or if there was a relationship between the number of seedlings planted over the past 4 years and zoning, socioeconomic, health, and environment variables in the neighborhoods of São Paulo, as well as to evaluate the ecosystem services provided by the planted species. Our results showed that tree planting was not oriented to increase cover of less-vegetated areas of the city and where more respiratory diseases have been registered. In fact, the number of seedlings planted over the past 4 years was very influenced by socioeconomic status of inhabitants. In this sense, wealth and education proved to be a better predictor than zoning, health, and environmental variables for the tree planting. Finally, our results reveal that supporting, provision, and cultural functions and services are being provided to São Paulo city by the selected woody species. In Sao Paulo, urban afforestation must extend to the neighborhoods that need the services the most.