Deforestation Trajectories in a Frontier Region of the Brazilian Amazon

This chapter provides a conceptual framework for a micro-level approach for studying farm-level and landscape change in the context of an agricultural frontier region of the Brazilian Amazon. The development of a property grid overlay (with 3913 properties) facilitates the extraction of data on land cover change derived from the analysis of a time-series of remotely sensed images from 1970 to 1996. Time-segments between remotely sensed images permits the identification of the period of initial clearing and for analyzing the amount of farmland that is cleared annually by approximate age of the farm for the 25-year period. Deforestation is greatest in the beginning of farm settlement and slows down in subsequent years followed by a leveling off around year 18–20. The analysis suggests that by the year 2020, after 50 years of colonization, there will be between 24–32 percent of the original forest remaining.