Study of Hot Spots in the Alter do Chão Environmental Protection Area Based on Open Data

The aim of this study was to analyze data from hot spots from 2013 to 2022 in the Environmental Protection Area (EPA) Alter do Chão using open data. This conservation unit is located in the state of Pará/Brazil and is considered one of the most important in the country, due to its great biodiversity and cultural relevance. The EPA Alter do Chão is a transition region between the Amazon Forest and the Cerrado, which makes it unique and of great scientific interest. The first step was to research platforms that made environmental monitoring data available. In all, six platforms were found with the most diverse types of monitoring data. Finally, it was decided to use data from the Queimadas portal. This portal is a system for monitoring and alerting fires and forest fires in Brazil, developed by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which uses satellite data to detect and map areas of fires in almost real time, providing data on outbreaks of current heat and other periods. The Python language was used to obtain and analyze the data collected in this study. For this, the Google Colab environment was used, which provides a free platform for executing Python codes in the cloud. In addition, the pandas and folium libraries were used to manipulate data and create heat maps, respectively. The year with the highest number of hot spots (788) in the region close to the EPA Alter do Chão was 2017. From 2018, there was a considerable drop, reaching the minimum value of 152 hot spots in 2021. This reduction, when compared to 2017, it was over 80%. When checking the average number of hot spots per month, considering the ten years of study, it can be seen that the most critical period runs from October to December, with November being the month that has, on average, the highest number of hot spots (206), followed by the month of December (108). By analyzing the spatial distribution of hot spots in the conservation unit for each year, it is possible to verify that the first five years of the analyzed period were, in fact, the years that presented the hottest spots in the APA area. From the images, it is possible to visually verify that the year 2017 was the year with the highest occurrence of hot spots within the conservation unit, and that in 2020 there was no hot spot present in the EPA region. Thus, through this study, it was possible to verify that the conservation units are not exempt from the burning practices that occur in the region and that suffer pressure from anthropic activities, even if they are legally protected. It should also be noted that the availability of open data can encourage the participation of the general public in monitoring protected areas, allowing society to access information about these areas and participate in monitoring and conservation initiatives.