THE TRANSAMAZONIAN HIGHWAY (BR-319) AND ITS CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

The objective of this study is to evaluate the environmental degradation along highway BR-319, which connects Porto Velho in the region of the arc of deforestation with Manaus in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, in the period from 2008 to 2020. And to verify whether the maintenance of the highway contributed to deforestation. For this, we created a 20 km buffer adjacent to the BR-319 highway and evaluated variables extracted from remote sensing information corresponding to the same period. The drought index was calculated using staILstical tests for a time series. To relate deforestation data, conservation units (CUs), and indigenous lands (ILs), we used principal component analysis and Pearson correlation. Our results showed that 743 km2 of forest were deforested during the evaluated period and 16,472 fires were identified. The most affected areas were close to the capital cities, and after the resumption of road maintenance in 2015, deforestation increased outside the capital cities.