Remote Sensing Images to Detect Soy Plantations in the Amazon Biome—The Soy Moratorium Initiative

Bernardo F. T. Rudorff, Marcos Adami, Joel Risso, Daniel Alves De Aguiar, Bernardo Pires, Daniel Amaral, Leandro Fabiani and Izabel Cecarelli
Additional contact information
Bernardo F. T. Rudorff: National Institute for Space Research, Avenida dos Astronautas, 1758, São José dos Campos, SP, 12243-750, Brazil
Marcos Adami: National Institute for Space Research, Avenida dos Astronautas, 1758, São José dos Campos, SP, 12243-750, Brazil
Joel Risso: National Institute for Space Research, Avenida dos Astronautas, 1758, São José dos Campos, SP, 12243-750, Brazil
Daniel Alves De Aguiar: National Institute for Space Research, Avenida dos Astronautas, 1758, São José dos Campos, SP, 12243-750, Brazil
Bernardo Pires: Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries, Av. Vereador José Diniz, 3707, 7th floor, São Paulo, SP, 04603-004, Brazil
Daniel Amaral: Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries, Av. Vereador José Diniz, 3707, 7th floor, São Paulo, SP, 04603-004, Brazil
Leandro Fabiani: Geoambiente Consulting Engineering, Av. Shishima Hifumi, 2911, 2th floor, Parque Tecnológico UNIVAP, Urbanova, São José dos Campos, SP 12244-000, Brazil
Izabel Cecarelli: Geoambiente Consulting Engineering, Av. Shishima Hifumi, 2911, 2th floor, Parque Tecnológico UNIVAP, Urbanova, São José dos Campos, SP 12244-000, Brazil

Sustainability, 2012, vol. 4, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: The Soy Moratorium is an initiative to reduce deforestation rates in the Amazon biome based on the hypothesis that soy is a deforestation driver. Soy planted in opened areas after July 24th, 2006 cannot be commercialized by the associated companies to the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (ABIOVE) and the National Association of Cereal Exporters (ANEC), which represent about 90% of the Brazilian soy market. The objective of this work is to present the evaluation of the fourth year of monitoring new soy plantations within the Soy Moratorium context. With the use of satellite images from the MODIS sensor, together with aerial survey, it was possible to identify 147 polygons with new soy plantations on 11,698 ha. This soy area represents 0.39% of the of the total deforested area during the moratorium, in the three soy producing states of the Amazon biome, and 0.6% of the cultivated soy area in the Amazon biome, indicating that soy is currently a minor deforestation driver. The quantitative geospatial information provided by an effective monitoring approach is paramount to the implementation of a governance process required to establish an equitable balance between environmental protection and agricultural production.

Keywords: Soy Moratorium; deforestation; Amazon forest; MODIS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/5/1074/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/5/1074/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:4:y:2012:i:5:p:1074-1088:d:17921

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().