Shaping the Brazilian landscape: a process drive by land occupation, large-scale deforestation, and rapid agricultural expansion

Abstract Brazil is one of the largest food producers in the world, a leading role that prompted a profound process of anthropization of itslandscapes. Knowing the dynamics and dimension of these transformations is essential for a more efficient and sustainable useof the country’s natural resources. Thus, in this study we present, based on an unprecedented sample design and interpretationof 85,152 sample points in Landsat images, the area estimates of the main land cover and land use classes in Brazil, as wellas their annual transitions, from 1985 to 2018. Our results indicate that, of the 850 Mha that comprise the national territory,294.2 Mha±1.44%were anthropized in 2018, with ~34%of this area converted after 1985. In this period, there was a loss of98.2 Mha±2.27%of natural vegetation, and an increase of 55.1 Mha±0.64%in the pasture areas and 28.2 Mha±0.29%in theareas of annual crops. The transition analysis showed that 83.07 Mha±1.31%of pastures and 9.64 Mha±0.45%of agriculture(annual, semi-perennial, and perennial combined) occurred over natural vegetation, 18.12 Mha±0.63%of pastures wereconverted to agriculture, while another 9.7 Mha±0.45%were abandoned, which can serve as important land reserves for otheruses. The vast public dataset, approaches (simple, robust, and straightforward), codes and tools (open and available) utilizedin this study can be easily employed in any other region of the world, in support of environmental monitoring and improvedterritorial governance practices.