A Look at Amazon Basin Seasonal Dynamics with the Biophysical ...

Monitoring Land Cover Change for all of Amazonia Using Landsat TM, D. Skole 1 , W. Chomentowski 1 , E. Matricardi 1 , M. Pedlowski, 2 .1Michigan State University - Basic Science and Remote Sensing Initiative2 LEEA/CCH/UENF Av. Alberto Lamego, 2000 Campos dos Goytacazes, RJLand cover change has been occurring in the Brazilian Amazon over the past 30 years atan average rate of 18500 km 2 per year from 1975 to 1999. In that time nearly 10 percent(440 km 2 ) of the Brazilian Amazon has been converted to pasture and other agriculturaluses. The patterns of land use change are intricate and occur over a 5 million squarekilometer area designated as the Amazon Legal. The Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) were used to capture spatial patterns of landcover change over the whole region for three time periods. 700 Landsat scenes werecollected for three time periods 1992, 1996, and 1999. Each time period spanned threeyears (i.e. 1992 data was collected in 1991, 1992, and 1993) in order to acquire imageswith the least cloud cover. The data was digitally processed into data layers of forest,deforestation, regenerating forest, water, clouds and Cerrado, co-registered to 1999 ETM+ images and merged into regional land cover data set. Accuracy was assessed sbyground truth comparison in, 1993, 1997, and 2000. A distance/probability model wasused on the mosaic to remove clouds, and make water and Cerrado boundaries consistentover time. This data set and the images it was derived from are available on the WorldWide Web at the Tropical Rainforest Information Center (TRFIC) www.bsrsi.msu.edu.