Biome has already lost almost half of its native vegetation e, com isso, está ficando mais quente e seco
Access the Cerrado highlights in Collection 7 of MapBiomas Brasil
September 11, 2022 - Between 1985 and 2021, the area occupied by soybean crops in the Cerrado grew by 1443%, occupying almost 20 million hectares, or 10% of the biome, last year. In these 37 years, agricultural activities have expanded by 508%, from 4 million hectares to almost 25 million hectares in the Cerrado. Of this total, 20 million are soybean fields. In the last 10 years, however, this crop has advanced mainly over areas of native vegetation in the Matopiba states (Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia). Together, they account for 80% of the direct conversion of native vegetation to sojiculture between 2011 and 2021. Another state that stands out is Minas Gerais, where soybean plantations jumped from 14,000 hectares in 1985 to 2.4 million hectares in 2021.
Os dados são da mais recente coletânea de informações sobre ocupação e uso da terra no território brasileiro produzida pelo MapBiomas a partir de todas as imagens disponíveis nos últimos 37 anos pelos satélites Landsat. O levantamento sobre o segundo maior bioma brasileiro, que está sendo lançado neste domingo, 11, quando se comemora o Dia do Cerrado, mostra ainda que praticamente um terço (30,6%) da antropização de áreas do Cerrado aconteceu nos últimos 37 anos. Em 2021 apenas metade do bioma (53,1%) ainda está coberto por vegetação nativa. Foram 27,9 milhões de hectares de vegetação nativa perdidos entre 1985 e 2021.
"The Cerrado is undergoing two simultaneous processes of transformation. On the one hand, areas that were already anthropized, pastures, are being converted into crops. On the other hand, however, we see crops coming directly onto native vegetation. This indicates that the increase in production in the biome is not due to better practices and soil management, but to the opening up of new areas for cultivation," explains Dhemerson Conciani, a researcher at IPAM who is part of the Cerrado team at MapBiomas. The replacement of pastures with grain crops is occurring more intensely in the south and southeast of the biome, in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso do Sul.
MapBiomas researchers fear the effects of this rapid and radical transformation. "We don't know the point of no return for the Cerrado," warns Julia Shimbo, a researcher at IPAM and MapBiomas' scientific coordinator. "But there is already evidence of the impact of this loss of native vegetation on the regional climate." Artigo publicado por pesquisadores brasileiros concluiu que a conversão de áreas nativas do Cerrado para pastagens e agricultura já tornou o clima na região quase 1°C mais quente e 10% mais seco. “Mudanças climáticas globais ainda podem agravar esse cenário de aumento de temperatura e redução de chuvas, trazendo prejuízos para a agricultura, o abastecimento de água das cidades e a produção energética do país.”, completa Julia.
The preservation of the Cerrado depends heavily on private landowners, as the biome has only 12% of its territory protected by some kind of conservation unit or indigenous land. "This means that 67% of the remaining native vegetation is on private property, emphasizing the responsibility of the private sector in conserving the world's most biodiverse savannah," he says.
The biome will gain a new system for monitoring deforestation alerts next week. The Cerrado Deforestation Alert System (SAD Cerrado), is launched this Monday, September 12th at 10:30 am, by IPAM in partnership with the MapBiomas network and LAPIG/UFG. The system uses artificial intelligence algorithms and 10-meter resolution Sentinel-2 satellite images to detect deforestation alerts covering the entire biome.