We have developed a near-real time deforestation monitoring system, named SAD (Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento) to monitor the Brazilian Amazon states. Here, we present how SAD works and has been used to monitor deforestation in different types of forest reserves in the State of Mato Grosso, and the potential use of this information to stop illegal deforestation in these reserves. The types o...

The present study was conducted to assess socio-economic impacts of deforestation of Hyrcanian forests in two basins of Do-Hezar and Se-Hezar, northern Iran. To this end, changes in the forest area were detected over the period between 1990 and 2006 based on land use land cover maps derived from Landsat and IRS satellite images. The land use changes were investigated by enhancement of the image...

Recent drought events underscore the vulnerability of Amazon forests to understorey fires. The long-term impact of fires on biodiversity and forest carbon stocks depends on the frequency of fire damages and deforestation rates of burned forests. Here, we characterized the spatial and temporal dynamics of understorey fires (1999-2010) and deforestation (2001-2010) in southern Amazonia using new ...

Measuring the aerial extent of tropical deforestation for other than localized areas requires the use of satellite data.We present evidence to show that an accurate determination of tropical deforestation is very di cult to achieve by a ‘random sampling’ analysis of Landsat or similar high spatial resolution data unless a very high percentage of the area to be studied is sampled. In order to a...

A n alarming annual average deforestation rate of 22,500 km2 in the Brazilian Amazon (1) from 2000 to 2005 has focused international attention on Brazil because of the destruction of this high-biodiversity biome (2) and its globally significant contribution to carbon emissions (3). Deforestation has already converted 680,000 km2 of pristine forests to other land covers, accounting for 75% of Br...

This paper highlights the link between deforestation and credit instability in Latin American countries which exhibit strong deforestation rates as well as macroeconomic instability that is often rooted in the alternating episodes of credit booms and crunches. Pieces of explanation establishing a causal link between credit instability and deforestation driven by agricultural expansion are put f...

Forest conservation and REDD+ projects invest millions of dollars each year to reduce local communities' dependence on forests and prevent forest loss and degradation. However, to date, there is limited evidence on whether these investments are effective at delivering conservation outcomes. We explored the relationships between 600+ small-scale conservation and development investments that occu...

Growing demand for agricultural commodities is causing the expansion of agricultural frontiers onto native vegetation worldwide. Agribusiness companies linking these frontiers to distant spaces of consumption through global commodity chains increasingly make zero-deforestation pledges. However, production and land conversion are often carried out by less-visible local and regional actors that a...

BACKGROUND Global carbon stocks in forest biomass are decreasing by 1.1 Gt of carbon annually, owing to continued deforestation and forest degradation. Deforestation emissions are partly offset by forest expansion and increases in growing stock primarily in the extra-tropical north. Innovative financial mechanisms would be required to help reducing deforestation. Using a spatially explicit inte...

In lazy functional programming modularity is often achieved by using intermediate data structures to combine separate parts of a program. Each intermediate data structure is produced by one part and consumed by another one. Deforestation optimises a functional program by transformation into a program which does not produce such intermediate data structures. In this thesis we present a new metho...