Agricultural landscapes of the Southern Brazilian Amazon are the result of eighty years of governmental policies to install a powerful agricultural sector. Yet, this rapid expansion raised important environmental considerations especially with regard to deforestation. The agricultural frontier is thus now facing a huge challenge: to combine socioeconomic development with environmental conservation in a context of frontier expansion. Based on a conceptual model of the agricultural frontier, we review historical changes in environmental and development policies in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and emphasize their ambivalent trend to both encourage and control the progress of the frontier. We then extend this model with an integration stage where environmental governance and economic development evolve from competing to complementary concepts. At this stage, the efforts to slow down deforestation are accompanied with programs to promote new agricultural practices and support industrialization. Finally, we put into perspective this recent evolution with regards to the underlying reasons for changing the agricultural model, thus considering the agricultural frontier to be at a tipping point where first positive results need to be confirmed in spite of an unstable economic and political situation.

International audienceHighlights • Low overall relations between population density and deforestation. • One third of Amazon deforestation is associated with only 1.5% of the population. • In contrast, 13% of the rural population live in preserved forests. • 'Discrete urbanization' of rural areas: multiplication of small towns. Abstract This paper provides the first analysis at the sub-municipality scale of the relationships between population densities and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2000 and 2010. We use the database on deforestation published by the Brazilian space research center (INPE) and the population census data released by the federal geographical and statistical agency IBGE at their finest scale: the census tract level. By crossing the population density and deforestation variables, we identify ten human settlement patterns in the Amazon. There are low-low and high-high classes of population density and deforestation, but also low-high and high-low classes. This analysis helps understand the low overall relations in the Amazon for population and deforestation. We emphasize the expansion of large-scale agriculture and cattle ranching as causing the depopulation of rural areas while in many regions of the Amazon quite strong population densities coexist with relatively low extents of deforestation. Such findings stress the need to implement case-specific public policies in these regions in order to encourage human presence compatible with the conservation of forest cover and biodiversity. We also confirm the importance of the Amazon urbanization process, including the 'discrete urbanization' of rural areas, and the need to better recognize the distinct social and environmental problems of urban areas

In the agricultural frontiers of Brazil, the distinction between forested and deforested lands traditionally used to map the state of the Amazon does not reflect the reality of the forest situation. A whole gradient exists for these forests, spanning from well conserved to severely degraded. For decision makers, there is an urgent need to better characterize the status of the forest resource at the regional scale. Until now, few studies have been carried out on the potential of multisource, freely accessible remote sensing for modelling and mapping degraded forest structural parameters such as aboveground biomass (AGB). The aim of this article is to address that gap and to evaluate the potential of optical (Landsat, MODIS) and radar (ALOS-1 PALSAR, Sentinel-1) remote sensing sources in modelling and mapping forest AGB in the old pioneer front of Paragominas municipality (Para state). We derived a wide range of vegetation and textural indices and combined them with in situ collected AGB data into a random forest regression model to predict AGB at a resolution of 20 m. The model explained 28% of the variance with a root mean square error of 97.1 Mg·ha −1 and captured all spatial variability. We identified Landsat spectral unmixing and mid-infrared indicators to be the most robust indicators with the highest explanatory power. AGB mapping reveals that 87% of forest is degraded, with illegal logging activities, impacted forest edges and other spatial distribution of AGB that are not captured with pantropical datasets. We validated this map with a field-based forest degradation typology built on canopy height and structure observations. We conclude that the modelling framework developed here combined with high-resolution vegetation status indicators can help improve the management of degraded forests at the regional scale. IntroductionDeforestation and forest degradation are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions [1,2], contributing to forest carbon losses [3], global climate change, affecting biodiversity [4] and the entire forest ecosystem. While deforestation refers to the rapid conversion from forest to non-forest areas, degradation implies changes in the forest structure with no change in land use [5,6]. In Amazonia, over the last decades, deforestation and forest degradation have shaped the rural landscape, resulting in a complex mosaic of fragmented forests associated with agricultural lands [7]. A total area of 766,448.5 km 2 was cleared in 2015 [8], representing 20% of Amazonia [9,10].Since 2005, deforestation in Brazil has drastically decreased thanks to coercive measures taken by the Brazilian government associated with private initiatives (soy and beef moratoria), among other factors [11]. However, these measures are not effective for reducing forest degradation [12,13]. Most of the remaining forested lands are degraded due to the accumulation over time and space of severe degradation processes mainly triggered by anthropogenic impacts through unsustainable logging practices, fire, shifting cultivation ...

Abstract:In the Brazilian Amazon, multiple logging activities are undergoing, involving different actors and interests. They shape a disturbance gradient bound to the intensity and frequency of logging, and forest management techniques. However, until now, few studies have been carried out at the landscape scale taking into account these multiple types of logging and this disturbance gradient. Here we address this issue of how to account for the multiple logging activities shaping the current forest landscape. We developed an inexpensive and efficient remote sensing methodology based on Landsat imagery to detect and track logging activity based on the monitoring of canopy openings. Then, we implemented a set of remote sensing indicators to follow the different trajectories of forest disturbance through time. Using these indicators, we emphasized five major spatial and temporal disturbance patterns occurring in the municipality of Paragominas (State of Pará, Brazilian Amazon), from well-managed forests to highly over-logged forests. Our disturbance indicators provide observable evidence for the difference between legal and illegal patterns, with some illegal areas having suffered more than three explorations in fifteen years. They also clearly underlined the efficiency of Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) techniques applied under Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) guidelines to reduce the logging impacts in terms of canopy openings. For these reasons, we argue the need to promote legal certified logging to conserve forests, as without them, many actors mine the forest resources without any concerns for future stocks. Finally, our remote tracking methodology, which produces easy to interpret disturbance indicators, could be a real boon to forest managers, including for conservationists working in protected areas and stakeholders dealing with international trade rules such as RBUE (Wood regulation of European Union) or FLEGT (Forest Law for Enforcement, Governance and Trade).

International audienceHighlights • We emphasize the end of the boom-and-bust development pattern in the Brazilian Amazon. • Deforestation and socioeconomic development follow an inverted U-shape relationship. • Household incomes are greater in stabilized areas than in areas undergoing deforestation. • Environmental governance efforts fostered the emergence of EKC. Abstract Socioeconomic development in the Brazilian Amazon is currently reaching national averages although deforestation activity has been declining for a decade. As a consequence, recent studies rejected the widely agreed boom-and-bust development hypothesis that deforestation first generates an economic boom, which is then followed by a collapse as forest resources are depleted. Here, we confirm these studies that there is no boom-bust cycle and suggest that a new pattern of relationship between deforestation and socioeconomic development has emerged following an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). In this scenario, environmental degradation increases in the early stages of economic development and decreases in later stages as the economy develops and wellbeing increases. To validate this assumption, we conducted the first sub-municipal analysis of socioeconomic development and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the 2000–2010 period. Our results confirm the emergence of an EKC relationship with a turning point beyond which socioeconomic growth does not appear anymore to be a driver of deforestation. We also emphasize that areas subjected to active deforestation in 2010 present lower socio-Author manuscript version economic indicators than stabilized areas, pointing to the precarious socioeconomic situation of areas still undergoing active deforestation. We put these results in perspective by considering Brazilian efforts to ensure a transition in environmental governance with the objective of promoting land use sustainability through control of deforestation at the same time as supporting socioeconomic development

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International audienceThe influence of conservation policies on environmental governance by indigenous peoples is not well understood. Our goal is to understand the role of conservation policies in the on-going social, spatial and temporal reorganisation of common natural resources management by the Wayãpi and Teko in French Guiana. Using socio-economic and land use variables, we explain their territorial reorganisation. We show how the delimitation of protected areas encourages identity claims and resources re-appropriation, which play a determining role in territorial reorganisation.Finally, we focus on the emergence of a new form of environmental governance based on “multi-sited” land use system

Les populations amérindiennes expérimentent depuis plusieurs décennies des changements socio-économiques et territoriaux importants, dans un contexte d'augmentation démographique forte. L'article aborde l'adaptation des systèmes d'occupation du territoire et d'exploitation des ressources naturelles des Amérindiens de Guyane française face aux contraintes exercées sur leur territoire et leur mode de vie. Quelle est la résilience des systèmes amérindiens d'utilisation du territoire et de ses ressources naturelles ? La concentration de l'habitat amérindien autour du bourg de Camopi, liée à l'implantation des infrastructures de type centre de santé et école, et à la promotion de l'habitat sédentaire, contribue à générer une pénurie des ressources naturelles et un mal-être social. Le système s'adapte par un éclatement de l'habitat en villages périphériques et par une extension des terroirs agricoles le long des cours d'eau, afin de retrouver de l'espace. Ces villages reproduisent un modèle d'organisation spatiale semblable à l'organisation traditionnelle des villages wayãpi et teko. L'habitat reste cependant sédentaire, les familles souhaitant voir leur village se faire équiper des services minimaux : eau potable et électrification. La limite spatiale à l'éclatement de l'habitat demeure les déplacements journaliers vers l'école, et par conséquent la desserte par le transport scolaire (pirogue). Ainsi, les services et infrastructures conditionnent l'occupation du territoire. Des abattis complémentaires sont maintenus à plus grande distance du bourg et l'habitat devient bilocal : un habitat principal desservi par les services et infrastructures et un habitat secondaire, éloigné et itinérant, conditionné par la qualité des terres agricoles, les ressources cynégétiques, l'histoire du lieu et les réseaux familiaux. Le maintien de ces habitations éloignées est possible grâce à l'investissement des revenus issus des aides sociales dans le transport. Il est ainsi montré que les systèmes amérindiens d'occupation du territoire et d'exploitation des ressources naturelles ont un potentiel adaptatif fort : ils s'appuient sur la recomposition de mobilités circulaires, organisées selon un gradient d'intensité d'utilisation des ressources, qui garantit la durabilité du système.