MAP-Fire: a virtual platform for managing the carbon balance between fire emissions and secondary forest removals for the State of Maranhão

Abstract

Climate change, partly already observed in some regions of the Amazon, causes the prolongation of the dry season and the increase in the frequency of extreme droughts. These changes combined with landscape fragmentation and forest degradation, resulting from logging and the expansion of the agricultural frontier, are the main causes of uncontrolled fires that become fires. In the state of Maranhão, these combined events are intensified, putting the conservation of the Amazon rainforest in check, which currently has a 76% reduction in the original coverage of the biome, inducing the loss of its ecosystem services. The overall objective of the project, therefore, is to provide a diagnosis and a system for monitoring the occurrence and likelihood of fires in the Amazon biome in the state of Maranhão, in order to subsidize fire prevention and control measures, and thus improve resource management. natural resources and priority areas for conservation. This type of information will allow the identification of priority areas for both conservation, and for degraded lands with potential for ecological restoration. From the combination of data derived from remote and field sensors, to estimate the burned area, the accumulated fuel, and an innovative methodology to integrate CO2 emissions due to fire and CO2 removals by the growth of secondary vegetation, make this pioneering proposal for the translation of technical and scientific information for decision makers. The final product of this project aims to provide society with an online, didactic and easily accessible platform for viewing information on fires, climate, biomass accumulation, deforestation, and CO2 emissions for the state of Maranhão. Thus, the transparency and management of environmental information will allow analysis of specific information by municipality, protected areas, and rural properties, in order to assist the actions of territorial planning and conservation by Organs management bodies. (AU)