A spatial pattern analysis of forest loss in the Madre de Dios region, Peru

Abstract

Over the past decades, the Peruvian Amazon has experienced a rapid change in forest cover due to the expansion of agriculture and extractive activities. This study uses spectral mixture analysis (SMA) in a cloud-computing platform to map forest loss within and outside indigenous territories, protected areas, mining concessions, and reforestation concessions within the Madre de Dios Region in Peru. The study area is focused on key areas of forest loss in the western part of the Tambopata National Reserve and surrounding the Malinowski River. Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus surface reflectance data spanning 2013-2018 were analyzed using cloud-based SMA to identify patterns of forest loss for each year. High-resolution Planet Dove (3m) and RapidEye (5m) imagery were used to validate the forest loss map and to identify the potential drivers of loss. Results show large areas of forest loss, especially within buffer zones of protected areas.Forest loss also appears in the Kotsimba Native Community within a 1 km buffer of the Malinowski River. In addition to gold mining, agriculture and pasture fields also appear to be major drivers of forest loss for our study period. This study also suggests that gold mining activity is potentially not restricted to the legal mining concession areas, with 49% of forest loss occurring outside the mining concessions. Overall accuracy obtained for the forest loss analysis was 96%. These results illustrate the applicability of a cloud-based platform not only for land use land cover change detection but also for accessing and processing large datasets; the importance of monitoring not only forest loss progression in the Madre de Dios, which has been increasing over the years, especially within buffer zones, but also its drivers; and reiterates the use of SMA as a reliable change detection classification approach.

Desarrollo estructural y composición florística arbórea en áreas afectadas por minería aurífera en la Amazonía peruana: a 20 años de su reforestación

“…La Amazonía peruana viene experimentando un rápido cambio en la cobertura de bosques debido a la expansión de agricultura y actividades extractivas (Nicolau et al, 2019). Una de estas actividades es la minería, considerada importante en la economía y desarrollo de las sociedades humanas (Cherlet et al, 2018).…”

Genetic threats to the Forest Giants of the Amazon: Habitat degradation effects on the socio‐economically important Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa)

“…Nevertheless, the rainforest landscapes where it occurs are undergoing increasing processes of forest degradation and land conversion, which puts in risk its population viability, fruit productivity, and value-chain sustainability. This is the case of our study highly biodiverse study region, Madre de Dios, in the Peruvian Amazon, where habitat degradation has been intensified during the latest decades in relation to growth in human settlements, the construction of the Interoceanic Highway that crosses eastern part of the region,, and associated increased access to previously remote areas making them prone to degradation (Finer et al, 2017;Caballero Espejo, 2018;Pinasco, 2018;Nicolau et al, 2019 and Figure S1).…”

“…This study was established in the highly biodiverse region of Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon. In this region, several human activities, mainly mining, logging, and land conversion to agriculture (Finer et al, 2017;Caballero Espejo, 2018;Pinasco, 2018;Nicolau et al, 2019 and Figure S1), have since contemporary times degraded the landscapes region at wide range. In this region and covering a total of 15.18 km 2 , we studied Brazil nut populations by identifying adult trees for collection of DNA samples for genetic analysis from scattered study sites following a categorized gradient of forest degradation.…”

Diversity Bears Fruit: Evaluating the Economic Potential of Undervalued Fruits for an Agroecological Restoration Approach in the Peruvian Amazon

“…Historically colonized by consecutive migration waves, the department is today attracting Andean immigrant populations who are driven by the economic perspectives offered to rural workers in the sectors of informal gold mining and agriculture. These land-uses are the main drivers of the region's high deforestation rates [27] and have benefited from the recent paving of the Inter-oceanic Highway, along which all recent deforestation hotspots are located [25].…”