Caracterização da extração seletiva de madeira na reserva de desenvolvimento sustentável do juma e sua zona de amortecimento, sudeste do amazonas

Abstract

Demand for tropical wood in the Amazon adds urgency to the conservation of this ecosystem, especially by preventing practices that are at odds with environmental regulations. Logging in the state of Amazonas is being encouraged by the state government as development policy for the local economy. However, several factors contribute to an unpromising scenario for “sustainable” forest management. Although less timber is harvested in the state of Amazonas than in other states in the Brazilian Amazon, there is still a large amount of wood of illegal origin in the state. Protected areas are easy targets because of the absence of robust public policies for environmental management and because of the logistical difficulties of supervising such a large territory. This study sought to characterize the behavior and the dynamics of licensed and unlicensed practices for timber production in the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve (Juma Reserve) and in its buffer zone. Environmental-licensing information and satellite images (OLI/Landsat-8 and RapidEye) were used to identify and map areas with signs of selective logging. An average of 413.327m 3 of logs is harvested per year from forest management plans in Amazonas. The southern Amazonas region accounts for 59% of the industries consuming forest raw materials in the state and supplies much of the legal production. The Juma Reserve is under strong pressure from logging in the surrounding area. Using visual-interpretation techniques with RapidEye images, we identified 437.0 hectares with signs of logging in the Juma Reserve for the years 2011 and 2013 and 1740.6 hectares of illegal logging in the buffer zone for the same period. We were not successful in using the OLI/Landsat-8 images for the detection of logging; however, based on interpretation of images using a linear spectral mixing model, we were able to use the soil-derived fraction to map endogenous roads in the study area. The use of remote sensing can be applied in monitoring logging in the state of Amazonas, Brazil.