Roads in the Southwestern Amazon, State of Acre, between 2007 and 2019

Eric de Souza Nascimento, Sonaira Souza da Silva, Leandra Bordignon, Antonio Willian Flores de Melo, Amintas Brandão, Carlos M. Souza and Celso H. L. Silva Junior
Additional contact information
Eric de Souza Nascimento: Geoprocessing Laboratory Applied to the Environment (LabGAMA), Universidade Federal do Acre—UFAC, Cruzeiro do Sul, AC 69980-000, Brazil
Sonaira Souza da Silva: Geoprocessing Laboratory Applied to the Environment (LabGAMA), Universidade Federal do Acre—UFAC, Cruzeiro do Sul, AC 69980-000, Brazil
Leandra Bordignon: Geoprocessing Laboratory Applied to the Environment (LabGAMA), Universidade Federal do Acre—UFAC, Cruzeiro do Sul, AC 69980-000, Brazil
Antonio Willian Flores de Melo: Geoprocessing Laboratory Applied to the Environment (LabGAMA), Universidade Federal do Acre—UFAC, Cruzeiro do Sul, AC 69980-000, Brazil
Amintas Brandão: Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia—IMAZON, Belém, PA 66055-200, Brazil
Carlos M. Souza: Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia—IMAZON, Belém, PA 66055-200, Brazil
Celso H. L. Silva Junior: Tropical Ecosystems and Environmental Sciences Laboratory (TREES), National Institute for Space Research—INPE, São José dos Campos, SP 12227-010, Brazil

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 2, 1-12

Abstract: Over the past 40 years, roads have been the main driver behind the State of Acre’s occupation and development. However, the expansion of roads, has often been associated with the advance of deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and social conflicts. There are no up-to-date data available on the current extent of Acre’s road network nor its environmental and socioenvironmental impacts. In this study, we updated the State of Acre’s road network map for the period 2007 to 2019 through the visual interpretation of 153 Landsat images (5, 7, and 8) at a scale of 1:50,000. To estimate the impact of roads, we measured the distribution of roads in municipalities and in different land tenure categories and calculated the correlation between roads and annual deforestation. Up to 2019, we estimated 19,620 km of roads, of which 92% were unofficial roads, 6% federal roads, and 2% state roads. The roads increased at an average annual rate of 590 km year −1 . The most significant advance in road length between 2007 and 2019 was in protected areas (240%), followed by public lands (68%) and settlement projects (66%). We recommend monitoring of the road network to understand the landscape’s evolution and support actions against illicit environmental and socioenvironmental impacts.

Keywords: highways; deforestation; remote sensing; land-tenure; protected areas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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