PRECIPITATION AND TEMPERATURE BEHAVIOR IN THE ARC OF AMAZON DEFORESTATION

Abstract

The increasing importance of studying the impact of deforestation in Brazil is notorious, specially in the region known as the Amazonian Deforestation Arc, which encompasses several states such as Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Roraima, Tocantins, Pará and Maranhão. Due to its large territorial extension, the impacts of deforestation are not restricted to Brazil, and can interfere with the entire climate dynamics of the planet, since the Amazon forest, in addition to assisting in the assimilation of carbon, is responsible for large scale air flows, which affect precipitation and temperature. With the present project we aim to identify the effects of deforestation and land use changes on the climatic characteristics of the highlighted region, using data from INMET meteorological stations and from the MapBiomas and TerraBrasilis platforms. Time series and climatological normals of precipitation and temperature will be analyzed based on different indices mentioned in the literature (normalized anomaly, normalized precipitation index and climate change indices), on the Mann-Kendall Test, and also on parameters of descriptive statistics. Changes in land use around the chosen stations and over time will be evaluated using GIS. This analysis is expected to contribute to a better understanding of how land use changes resulting from deforestation affect the regional climate.