Vegetation trends in a protected area of the Brazilian Atlantic forest
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Forest ecosystems are areas of great environmental importance, as they provide various ecosystem services, such as soil water conservation, climate regulation, generation of natural habitats, decontamination of the environment, supply of food and materials (Tao et al., 2012; Nink et al., 2019; Díaz et al., 2020). Globally, forests absorb 15–20% of annual human carbon emissions (Quéré et al., 2018), most of which is stored on the surface of tree biomass or below the ground as carbon from the ground (Case et al., 2021). Thus, they are at the forefront of global initiatives for the mitigate of greenhouse gas emissions, since conserving remaining intact forests is important for carbon sequestration and prevention of future potential emissions (Jantz et al., 2014; Maxwell et al., 2019; Mitchell et al., 2017). Intact forest ecosystems have greater conservation benefits than degraded ones of a similar ecological type (Betts et al., 2019; Haddad et al., 2015), which is a strong argument to prioritize them for conservation management (Watson et al., 2018).
Although this value, forests are increasingly threatened by the expansion of human activities (Thompson et al., 2011; Venter et al., 2016). Forest degradation can occur through a fragmentation process, which in turn impacts biodiversity, biomass and, therefore, the forest's ability to provide many ecosystem services (Betts et al., 2019; Chaplin-Kramer et al., 2015; Potapov et al., 2012). In addition, recent climate changes can influence ecosystems, affecting the nature and distribution of species and, therefore, the ecosystems themselves (Vennetier and Ripert, 2009). This dynamic leads to changes in the offer of a range of ecosystem services (Parr et al., 2012) and generates impacts on economies and societies worldwide (Margulis et al., 2010; Nunes et al., 2012).
Some of the most threatened ecosystems in the world are the tropical forests of South America (Nunes et al., 2012). The Atlantic Forest is a type of tropical forest, which originally covered 1,345,300 km2, in three countries (92% of the total area in Brazil and the remaining 8% in Paraguay and Argentina), with more than 150 million in habitants. Although covering only 0.8% of the Earth's total surface, more than 5% of the world's vertebrate species have been cataloged in their area (Pinto et al., 2012). The richness of plant species is also high, with more than 20,000 species, of which 8000 are endemic (SOS Mata Atlântica and INPE, 2018). The Brazilian Atlantic Forest, which is one of the hotspots for biodiversity conservation (Forzza et al., 2012; Freitas et al., 2010; Ribeiro et al., 2009), has been threatened due to extensive land occupation for humanity. Due to the intense deforestation and human disturbances that occurred mainly in the first half of the 19th century (Dean, 1996), only about 13% of the native vegetation cover of the Atlantic Forest biome remains in Brazil (Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica / INPE, 2018). Nature reserves protect only 9% of the remaining forest (Ribeiro et al., 2009). In the state of Espírito Santo - Southeast Brazil, where the Atlantic Forest is predominant, there are only three natural reserves that provide integral protection, with at least 10,000 ha. One of these reserves is the Caparaó National Park (Santos et al., 2016a).
Continuous monitoring of vegetation is important to assess spatial and temporal variation in strength and dynamics, which can show severe fluctuations due to development activities and climate change (Vijith and Dodge-Wan, 2020). Among modern methods of monitoring terrestrial ecosystems, remote sensing stands out for its ability to provide information on large areas with high frequency acquisition and synoptic form (Richards, n.d.; Xie et al., 2008). Monitoring the Earth's surface changes using remote sensing has been widely applied in different applications such as changes in land use / cover (Demir et al., 2013; Huang et al., 2019), urban expansion / growth (Wang et al., 2018), hydrology (Luo et al., 2019), and change in vegetation (Kaliraj et al., 2012; Markogianni et al., 2013; Zhao et al., 2019). Since a large amount of data on the nature of the Earth's surface has been collected by remote sensing satellites at different spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions using appropriate band combinations, these data have become the main / primary sources used for the extraction of vegetation and its changes on the Earth's surface in recent decades (Amarnath et al., 2017; Boyte et al., 2018; Brown et al., 2013; Fensholt and Proud, 2012; Gärtner et al., 2014; Hilker et al., 2015; A Huete et al., 2002; Jamali et al., 2014; Moreira et al., 2019; O'Connell et al., 2014; Spiekermann et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2019).
Different vegetation indices derived from remote sensing, such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), have been used in several studies. Vegetation indices are more sensitive than individual spectral bands in detecting vegetation characteristics (Bannari et al., 1995; Pu et al., 2008; Rao et al., 2015; Sims and Gamon, 2003). The vegetation indices most commonly used to monitor vegetation on a global and local scale are the Normalized Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) (Garroutte et al., 2016). NDVI is an index derived from visible and near-infrared reflectance and is associated with the fraction of solar radiation absorbed by plants during photosynthesis (Berger et al., 2019). This index increases the absorptive and reflective characteristics of the vegetation and provides a way to estimate the greeness and canopy (Rouse et al., 1974; Huete et al., 2002). The EVI employs near infrared, red region and reflectance in the blue bands and was developed to improve the detection of the vegetation signal in regions with higher biomass density and the influence of soil and atmosphere interference in the canopy response (Huete, 1997; Justice et al., 2002; Ponzoni; Shimabukuro; Kuplich, 2012).
In the Atlantic Forest biome, research on interannual and seasonal trends in native vegetation using remote sensing data is incipient. Studies of Brazilian Atlantic forest vegetation include studies of changes in land use/ cover (Bicudo da Silva et al., 2020); studies of climate and vegetation conditions (Chiminazzo et al., 2021; de Santana et al., 2020); threats such as fire (de Andrade et al., 2020), but to a lesser extent are studies of the trends observed by remote sensing images in this biome (Branco et al., 2019; Rebello et al., 2020). In this context, we analyzed the interannual and seasonal trends observed between 2001 and 2019, in two adjacent areas of native vegetation of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, with different levels of protection: an area protected by law, where no human activities are allowed - Caparaó National Park - and the buffer zone of the Caparaó National Park, located in its surroundings, where human activities are moderately permitted. It is believed that the level of protection in these areas may contribute to differences in the responses of vegetation. Trends were analyzed in time series of vegetation index images from the Moderate Resolution Image Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor, which were subsequently correlated with the rain estimate data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite.
Section snippets
Research area
For this study, we selected Caparaó National Park, located along the border between Espírito Santo state and Minas Gerais state in southeast Brazil. The Caparaó National Park is an important conservation area for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome. Recent studies have been concerned with cataloging existing species in their area, which reiterates the importance of maintaining this conservation area. Moreira et al. (2020) carried out an extensive research, in which the results indicated that
Vegetation trends analysis
Our analysis of the temporal behavior of vegetation indices shows a persistent trend toward decreased vigor of the vegetation in Caparaó National Park (Fig. 3). The same behavior was not observed for the representative native vegetation of forest fragments in the buffer zone, which suggests differences between the vegetation of the Atlantic forest between the two areas. These differences may be caused by different surrounding environments and how vegetation responds to disturbances. It is also
Discussion
Our results suggest that Caparaó National Park has been characterized by a general decrease in greenness from 2001 to 2019. This decrease occurs in proportion to the time; and EVI was the index that most strengthened this conclusion. The results found for the buffer zone indicate an opposite behavior to the behavior of vegetation in the park, with tendencies of increase in vegetative vigor. For this case, the most expressive results were obtained from the NDVI time series. These differences may
Conclusion
We successfully used MODIS and TRMM remote sensing data to our methodologies for studying vegetation in the Brazilian Atlantic forest biome. The results of this study according with other work, and show the need for continued collaboration, which could boost the search for strategies to promote greater conservation of this biome. Furthermore, this methodology is feasible to be applied to larger areas around the world and can provide information on the conditions of vegetation trends and the
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to extend their thanks to the Integrated System for National Agency and Space Administration (NASA) and the Ministério do Meio Ambiente- Brazil (MMA) for providing the necessary data for implementing this work. We also thank the Research and Innovation Support Foundation of the Espírito Santo (FAPES), the Coordination of university level Personnel Improvement (CAPES), the Graduate Program in Forest Science of the Federal University of Espirito Santo, and group research,
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