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Mining drives extensive deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

ABSTRACT: Mining poses significant and potentially underestimated risks to tropical forests worldwide. In Brazil's Amazon, mining drives deforestation far beyond operational lease boundaries, yet the full extent of these impacts is unknown and thus neglected in environmental licensing. Here we quantify mining-induced deforestation and investigate the aspects of mining operations, which most likely contribute. We find mining significantly increased Amazon forest loss up to 70?km beyond mining lease boundaries, causing 11,670?km² of deforestation between 2005 and 2015. This extent represents 9% of all Amazon forest loss during this time and 12 times more deforestation than occurred within mining leases alone. Pathways leading to such impacts include mining infrastructure establishment, urban expansion to support a growing workforce, and development of mineral commodity supply chains. Mining-induced deforestation is not unique to Brazil; to mitigate adverse impacts of mining and conserve tropical forests globally, environmental assessments and licensing must considered both on- and off-lease sources of deforestation.

SUBMITTER: Sonter LJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5647322 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mining drives extensive deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Sonter Laura J LJ Herrera Diego D Barrett Damian J DJ Galford Gillian L GL Moran Chris J CJ Soares-Filho Britaldo S BS

Nature communications 20171018 1

Mining poses significant and potentially underestimated risks to tropical forests worldwide. In Brazil's Amazon, mining drives deforestation far beyond operational lease boundaries, yet the full extent of these impacts is unknown and thus neglected in environmental licensing. Here we quantify mining-induced deforestation and investigate the aspects of mining operations, which most likely contribute. We find mining significantly increased Amazon forest loss up to 70 km beyond mining lease boundar ...[more]

PMID: 29044104

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Project description:Tropical forests are diminishing in extent due primarily to the rapid expansion of agriculture, but the future magnitude and geographical distribution of future tropical deforestation is uncertain. Here, we introduce a dynamic and spatially-explicit model of deforestation that predicts the potential magnitude and spatial pattern of Amazon deforestation. Our model differs from previous models in three ways: (1) it is probabilistic and quantifies uncertainty around predictions and parameters; (2) the overall deforestation rate emerges "bottom up", as the sum of local-scale deforestation driven by local processes; and (3) deforestation is contagious, such that local deforestation rate increases through time if adjacent locations are deforested. For the scenarios evaluated-pre- and post-PPCDAM ("Plano de Ação para Proteção e Controle do Desmatamento na Amazônia")-the parameter estimates confirmed that forests near roads and already deforested areas are significantly more likely to be deforested in the near future and less likely in protected areas. Validation tests showed that our model correctly predicted the magnitude and spatial pattern of deforestation that accumulates over time, but that there is very high uncertainty surrounding the exact sequence in which pixels are deforested. The model predicts that under pre-PPCDAM (assuming no change in parameter values due to, for example, changes in government policy), annual deforestation rates would halve between 2050 compared to 2002, although this partly reflects reliance on a static map of the road network. Consistent with other models, under the pre-PPCDAM scenario, states in the south and east of the Brazilian Amazon have a high predicted probability of losing nearly all forest outside of protected areas by 2050. This pattern is less strong in the post-PPCDAM scenario. Contagious spread along roads and through areas lacking formal protection could allow deforestation to reach the core, which is currently experiencing low deforestation rates due to its isolation.

Dataset Information

Mining drives extensive deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Publications

Mining drives extensive deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

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