The Brazilian tropical savanna (Cerrado), encompassing more than 204 million hectares in the central part of the country, is the second richest biome in Brazil in terms of biodiversity and presents high land use pressure. The objective of this study was to map the land cover of the Cerrado biome based on the segmentation and visual interpretation of 170 Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus satellite scenes acquired in 2002. The following land cover classes were discriminated: grasslands, shrublands, forestlands, croplands, pasturelands, reforestations, urban areas, and mining areas. The results showed that the remnant natural vegetation is still covering about 61% of the biome, however, on a highly asymmetrical basis. While natural physiognomies comprise 90% of the northern part of the biome, only 15% are left in its southern portions. Shrublands were the dominant natural land cover class, while pasturelands were the dominant land use class in the Cerrado biome. The final Cerrado's land cover map confirmed the intensive land use pressure in this unique biome. This paper also showed that Landsat-like sensors can provide feasible land cover maps of Cerrado, although ancillary data are required to help image interpretation.

a b s t r a c tThe main objective of our study was to provide consistent information on land cover changes between the years 1990 and 2010 for the Cerrado and Caatinga Brazilian seasonal biomes. These areas have been overlooked in terms of land cover change assessment if compared with efforts in monitoring the Amazon rain forest. For each of the target years (1990, 2000 and 2010) land cover information was obtained through an object-based classification approach for 243 sample units (10 km  10 km size), using (E)TM Landsat images systematically located at each full degree confluence of latitude and longitude. The images were automatically pre-processed, segmented and labelled according to the following legend: Tree Cover (TC), Tree Cover Mosaic (TCM), Other Wooded Land (OWL), Other Land Cover (OLC) and Water (W). Our results indicate the Cerrado and Caatinga biomes lost (gross loss) respectively 265,595 km 2 and 89,656 km 2 of natural vegetation (TC þ OWL) between 1990 and 2010. In the same period, these areas also experienced gain of TC and OWL. By 2010, the percentage of natural vegetation cover remaining in the Cerrado was 47% and in the Caatinga 63%. The annual (net) rate of natural vegetation cover loss in the Cerrado slowed down from À0.79% yr À1 to À0.44% yr À1 from the 1990s to the 2000s, while in the Caatinga for the same periods the rate increased from À0.19% yr À1 to À0.44% yr À1 . In summary, these Brazilian biomes experienced both loss and gains of Tree Cover and Other Wooded Land; however a continued net loss of natural vegetation was observed for both biomes between 1990 and 2010. The average annual rate of change in this period was higher in the Cerrado (À0.6% yr À1 ) than in the Caatinga (À0.3% yr À1 ).

Resumo -O objetivo deste trabalho foi mapear o uso da terra do Bioma Cerrado na escala de 1:250.000. As seguintes classes de uso da terra foram consideradas: culturas agrícolas, pastagens cultivadas, reflorestamentos, áreas urbanas e áreas de mineração. A metodologia envolveu a segmentação de imagens do satélite Landsat, a classificação visual dos segmentos e a análise da exatidão global do mapa final. Aproximadamente 39,5% do Cerrado apresentaram algum tipo de uso de terra. Pastagens cultivadas e culturas agrícolas foram as classes predominantes, com 26,5 e 10,5%, respectivamente.Termos para indexação: Landsat, PROBIO, segmentação de imagens, sensoriamento remoto. Semidetailed land use mapping in the CerradoAbstract -The objective of this work was to map the land use in Cerrado at the 1:250,000 scale. The following classes of land use were considered: croplands, planted pasturelands, reforestations, urban settlements and mining areas. The methodological approach involved Landsat image segmentation, visual classification of the segments and analysis of the global accuracy of the final map. Approximately 39.5% of Cerrado presented some type of land use activity. Planted pasturelands and croplands were the dominant classes, with 26.5 and 10.5%, respectively.

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Pasture degradation is one of the major environmental and economic problems of Brazilian livestock production. Based on the estimates of soil loss in 140,297 km2 pasturelands of Goiás State and the Federal District, the effects of land use and management and conservation practices on soil erosion by water were evaluated. Soil loss was estimated with the empirical revised universal soil loss equation model under four scenarios of land use and management of pastures and the implementation of terraces. The effects of converting hilly areas into permanently preserved areas were also evaluated. Well‐managed pastures planted in terraces and highly sloped areas with native vegetation featured a reduction of 709% in the rate of soil erosion by water in comparison with poorly managed pastures without soil conservation practices. The environmental consequences of pasture degradation become particularly important when they are associated with land use in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes because farmers in these regions are forced to open new natural areas. In addition, the high indices of bare soil in degraded pastures contribute significantly to sediment deposition in rivers and dams. The modeling of soil loss is demonstrated to be an important tool for land use planning and supporting public policies focused on the sustainable use of natural resources. The results of these simulations demonstrate the importance of actions to recover degraded pastures, such as the Federal Government's program known as ABC (Low Carbon Agriculture). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The objective of this work was to analyze land use dynamics in the Brazilian Cerrado region from 2002 to 2013. This analysis was based on the interpretation of Landsat satellite images carried out by the projects Projeto de Conservação e Utilização Sustentável da Diversidade Biológica Brasileira (Probio) and TerraClass Cerrado 2013, both coordinated by Ministério do Meio Ambiente. In 2002, 38.9% of the Cerrado was covered by some type of anthropic activity. In 2013, this percentage increased to 43.4%. One of the main highlights is the emergence of a new agricultural frontier in the northern region of the study area, known as Matopiba.

Abstract. Surface roughness and soil moisture content control the distribution of rainfall into runoff, evapotranspiration, and infiltration. Satellite radar data have the potential to provide spatial and multitemporal estimates of these variables, depending upon the sensor configuration and field condition. The relation between the European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and measurements of surface roughness and moisture content of rocky soils in a semiarid rangeland in southeast Arizona was analyzed in this study. A dry and a wet season C band SAR image were acquired and corrected for topographic effects. Field soil roughness and moisture content data were obtained from 47 sampling sites. An intensive soil moisture sampling campaign was also conducted at three sites to determine the number of samples necessary to estimate soil moisture content with 10% accuracy. Dry and wet season SAR data were found to be correlated (r 2 = 0.80 and 0.59, respectively) with root-mean-square (RMS) height measurements, while SAR data from the wet season image were poorly correlated with soil moisture. The results indicated that C band SAR data are promising for estimation of surface roughness in semiarid rangelands. However, they are less promising for soil moisture estimation, unless the effects of soil roughness and vegetation are removed. The acquisition of an adequate number of soil moisture samples to obtain representative soil moisture measurements is also a key issue in the validation of soil moisture retrieval from SAR data. In the study area, at least 17 samples per hectare were needed to obtain soil moisture estimates with 10% accuracy.