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

Simulating land cover change along the 1,000-km Cuiaba-Santarem highway underscenarios of high and low governance.a Soares-Filho, B., b Alencar, A., b,c Nepstad, D., a Coutinho, G., b Carmen, M.,Rivero, S., c Solórzano, L., a Voll, E.An important challenge to conservation is to simulate the influence of potential policyinterventions on the processes that are impoverishing native ecosystems. We present asimulation model that is responsive to policy intervention scenarios for the BR-163corridor in central Amazonia. This corridor links the cities of Cuiabá, in center Brazil,and Santarém, on the shore of the Amazon River, crossing large tracts of undisturbedforest in Pará state. To evaluate the ecological impacts of this road paving, a simulationmodel was developed for a corridor of 410 km x 1080 km along the BR-163 road,divided into four frontier types. The model assesses the consequences of road paving,within two alternative scenarios: A "business as usual" and a "Governance" scenario. Themodel projects the trends, and analyzes the effects of a series of variables on the land useand land cover changes in light of the alternative scenarios. The "alternative scenariomodel" is coupled to DINAMICA - a landscape dynamics simulator--including a cellularautomata and a road constructor model by the exchange of dynamic transition rates andthe distribution of land use and land cover classes. The model can be thought of as a tool,designed to accommodate a large number of hypotheses on Amazonian landscapeevolution, thus its overall structure can be used as a guide to develop new simulationmodels of key Amazon areas. Furthermore, the set of maps provided by the model pointsout the crucial role of governance in preserving the Amazon.a Universidade Federal de Minas Geraisb Instituto de Pesquisa Ambietal da Amazôniac Woods Hole Research Center* Corresponding author. P.O. Box 296, Woods Hole, MA 02543, U.S.A.dnepstad@whrc.orgEmails:britaldo@csr.ufmg.brane@amazon.com.brdnepstad@whrc.orglsolorzano@whrc.org