Anais do XIX Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto

Carbon emissions from tropical countries are largely associated with changes in land use and land cover (LULCC), especially those related to direct conversion of old-growth forests into pastures or croplands through forest clearing and burning. Based on this process, the Brazilian proposal for reducing CO2 emissions has largely focused on curbing illegal deforestation rates. However, despite the reduction of deforestation rate and consequent reduction in the reported emissions linked to deforestation, there are evidences that carbon emission associated to fire incidence in human modified regions (without deforestation) have not decrease in the same period. Considering this scenario, our objective here was to test if areas affected by forest fires in Rondônia state between 2007 and 2015 are subsequently clear-cut through deforestation. The results showed that a considerable part of the affected area was burned at least 2 times during the studied period, with some forests burning up to seven times. In addition, the annual variability of forest fires and deforestation for the same place and same period were uncorrelated (R2=0.01).