GeoPortal TerraClass presents data on land use and coverage in the Cerrado

The Brazilian Cerrado has 49,4% of primary natural vegetation, according to TerraClass Cerrado 2018. The land use and cover mapping completed in 2020 identified that 28,9% of the biome is made up of pastures and 4,7% of natural vegetation secondary forestry. Complete mapping information is available to the public on GeoPortal TerraClass.

These data were produced by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations (MCTI), and by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), linked to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa) , within the scope of the FIP Rural Landscapes project.

According to the study, 76% of the area destined for agriculture remained a consolidated and stable area between 2013 and 2018. Regarding temporary two-cycle agriculture, the data shows that, in 2018, 77% of these activities took place in areas already consolidated agriculture, 14% on pastures and 5% on natural areas in 2013.

Another important fact pointed out the stability of the pasture area during the period, representing approximately 29% of the total area. The observation of this stability, associated with the expansion of the area of ​​temporary agriculture over pastures, indicates that there was a shift of part of the pastures to other classes of use and coverage in 2013.

The comparison considers the mapping of the base year of 2013, carried out by the Brazilian Biomes Environmental Monitoring Program (PMABB), despite some limitations related to the difference in methodologies adopted in carrying out the historical mappings. The inclusion of the natural secondary forest vegetation class is one of the innovations in the 2018 data. In terms of landscape, these territorial units play a role similar to the natural cover of the Cerrado, helping to restore natural ecosystems.

“Another innovation of TerraClass Cerrado is the mapping of temporary agriculture of one and more than one production cycle per agricultural year, which allows monitoring the dynamics of intensification of agricultural activities related to the production of grains and fibers”, says Alexandre Coutinho, researcher from Embrapa Agricultural Informatics.

Two-cycle agriculture is a national technology that allows producers to obtain two harvests and not just one in the same agricultural year. The researchers found that an important part of the growth in national agricultural production comes from gains arising from increased productivity, through the adoption of innovative and disruptive technologies, and another part occurred through the optimization and reuse of the same area, to the production of more than one crop.

For the director of the Department of Sustainable Production and Irrigation at Mapa, Mariane Crespolini dos Santos, “the availability of a technological tool capable of mapping and quantifying how much of a degraded area, with low productivity, has been transformed into a productive area is a big step towards Brazil.” She explains that TerraClass adds to other technologies, such as Pronasolos and the streamlined Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), available to society in general, which make up a range of diagnostic tools and development of short, medium and long-term strategies. term. “I see an opportune use to strengthen public policies, such as ABC+ and the Águas do Agro Program”, comments the director.

In the view of João Adrien, director of Environmental Regularization at the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB), “TerraClass mappings will be fundamental for the process of implementing the Forest Code, especially in the area of ​​environmental regularization because we will be able to monitor this recovery of native vegetation and understand how rural properties are adapting to legislation. It is extremely important to have this data so that we can plan public policies, understand where the areas of greatest environmental restoration are and how the government can provide credit and generate incentives for this restoration. At the same time, it also helps the country to measure its carbon emissions.”

TerraClass and FIP Rural Landscapes

Knowing and mapping land use and coverage to identify and qualify the main anthropogenic activities carried out in territorial units is the objective of TerraClass. The result of a partnership between Inpe and Embrapa, the project began in 2008, focusing on deforested areas in the Legal Amazon region. 

Expanded to the Cerrado, TerraClass will provide the Federal Government and the general public with official data on land use and coverage, referring to this biome. With this, the tool assumes a strategic role in the project “Integrated Landscape Management in the Cerrado Biome”, known as FIP Paisagens Rurais and supported by the Forest Investment Program (FIP - Forest Investment Program).

The main scope of the FIP Paisagens Rurais is to strengthen the adoption of conservation practices and restoration of native vegetation, in addition to low-carbon agricultural practices in the Cerrado biome, which will be measured through monitoring of landscape dynamics via satellite. 

The project is financed with resources from the Forest Investment Program, via the World Bank. Coordination is by the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB) and the Mapa Secretariat for Innovation, Rural Development and Irrigation, in partnership with the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GIZ), the National Rural Learning Service (Senar), Embrapa and MCTI , through Inpe.

This monitoring will have the contribution of TerraClass, biennially, offering systematic information and making it possible to determine the dynamics and history of land use and coverage in the region's anthropic areas. TerraClass identifies and qualifies the type of use and coverage of land present in areas already anthropized, previously detected and delimited by the Deforestation Monitoring Project in the Legal Amazon (Prodes) and is not focused on deforestation.

Adopting a more detailed cartographic scale, TerraClass will also identify, delimit, map and analyze changes in land use and cover, and in the landscape, in 10 river basins defined for the implementation of recovery actions for degraded areas on participating rural properties. to FIP Rural Landscapes.

“The TerraClass Cerrado project offers subsidies and information to the Federal Government and also to all civil society to face issues linked to planning agricultural production in the Cerrado, environmental protection, sustainability and management of natural resources, contributing to sustainable development of Brazilian agribusiness”, says Claudio Almeida, researcher at Inpe.

With the work of Inpe and Embrapa Informática Agropecuária, TerraClass will also support the execution of two more mappings, corresponding to the base years of 2020 and 2022, with the support of Embrapa Cerrados, the National Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA) and Sennar.

Digital platform

Another strategic aspect is the improvement and modernization of the GeoPortal TerraClass digital platform, developed by Embrapa Informática Agropecuária, together with Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, for the organization, distribution, analysis and dissemination of land use and coverage data identified in deforested areas of the Legal Amazon and which now encompasses the Cerrado biome. 

“The technological platform helps in the analysis of the geospatial dynamics of the region and constitutes an important tool to support the management of environmental policies, contributing to the elaboration of public policies for socioeconomic development”, highlights the general head of Embrapa Informática Agropecuária, Silvia Massruha.

In addition to making the entire original database available, through an intuitive and extremely friendly interface, the portal provides access to WebGIS TerraClass, a geoinformation system that offers users an easy-to-interact environment for viewing maps and carrying out various analyses. on territorial dynamics.

With the rapid evolution in the area of ​​information technology, providing new environments, tools and functionalities for the development of territorial management systems, it is necessary to update the software components of this platform. In this sense, another software architecture will be created to access the mappings produced and an innovative web interface will be developed to facilitate the organization and visualization of information.