Anais do XIX Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto

Deforestation-induced fragmentation has increased forest edges in Amazon forests. However, the dynamics of fires in these fragmented forest areas is poorly known in this region. To fill this gap, our work aimed to analyse the dynamics of fire in the forest edges in the South of the Amazon Basin. To achieve the proposed aim, we used a remote sensing derived dataset, composed with forest cover, land-use and land-cover, and burned areas. Our results showed that during the 2010 extreme drought, fire penetrability into the forest was maximized, impacting areas far from forest edges. The burned areas were found predominantly in edges older than 13 years. Fire presented greater recurrence rates at the edges than those inside the forest. The ignition sources at forest edges were mainly from adjacent pasture areas. Finally, we conclude that due the dynamics of fire at the forest edges revealed here the carbon stock loss may increase in these fragmented landscapes, contributing to the increase of regional carbon emissions from the Amazon Basin.