Projections of future forest degradation and CO2 emissions for the Brazilian Amazon.

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the area affected by forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon has frequently been higher than deforestation. From August 2006 to July 2019, the degraded area totaled 194,058 km2, representing almost two times the 99,630 km2 deforested in the same period. The impacts of degradation include biodiversity loss and changes in the carbon stocks, affecting the CO2 balance and future climate changes. This paper aims to explore socioeconomic and environmental factors that influence forest degradation, project future scenarios, and assess the impact on the regional carbon balance, combining forest degradation and deforestation-related processes (clear-cut deforestation and secondary vegetation dynamics). We show that, while net CO2 emissions from 2020 to 2050 are 0.74 Gt CO2 in the Sustainable scenario, this value reached 22.63 Gt CO2 in the Fragmentation scenario, an increasingly plausible scenario given the recent trends in the region.