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The role of private rural properties for conserving native vegetation in Brazilian Southern Amazonia

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Abstract

The State of Mato Grosso in Brazil has undergone intensive land use changes over the past decades. Native ecosystems have been converted into agrosystems for the production of cash crops and cattle. The Brazilian Forest Code advocates full protection of specifically sensitive habitats, and it also safeguards a fixed percentage of native vegetation known as “Legal Reserves” (LRs) inside private rural properties. As part of Brazilian Legal Amazonia region, in Mato Grosso, these percentages account for 35 % of savannas and 80 % of forests found inside each rural property. Here we analyze at the scale of the three biomes: Cerrado, Amazonia and Pantanal, the changes in native vegetation cover (NVC) from 1992 to 2007 and the representativeness of NVC types within the LRs, as well as the role of LRs for general landscape configuration and conservation. In Mato Grosso, 90 % of all studied NVC types are represented inside LR patches. Legal Reserves also accounted for 37 % of the total protected areas and for 37.8 % of all remnant NVCs found in Mato Grosso in 2007. The importance of LRs for landscape structure varied greatly according to biome, but it is noteworthy that LRs were generally missing in highly deforested zones. The relative small size of LRs in all biomes (55 to 64 % of them are ≤12 ha) makes them specifically vulnerable to further changes in land use. Considering the current tendency of ongoing fragmentation, the importance of LRs for landscape connectivity should be increased, specifically by improving the network of corridors between these remnant native vegetation areas.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded through the projects “Desenvolvimento de metodologia para detecção e mapeamento de áreas degradadas pela mineração e agropecuária em Mato Grosso” by the Secretary of Environment of Mato Grosso State (Contrato nº 071/2008/SEMA) (AS, GAB and MNN), and “Carbon sequestration, biodiversity and social structures in southern Amazonia (CarBioCial, see www.carbiocial.de)” supported by the Brazilian National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq) and the German Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF). We especially thank EAWAG and DAAD (LFR), and the National Institute for Science and Technology in Wetlands (INCT-INAU). We thank Jukka Jokela and Kristy Deiner of EAWAG, Duebendorf, Switzerland, for comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Engenharia Sanitária e Ambiental, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Campus Cuiabá, Av. Fernando Correa da Costa, S/N, Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, 78060-900, Brazil

    Auberto Siqueira

  2. Department of Aquatic Ecology, EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology, Überlandstrasse 133, P.O. Box 611, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Luisa Fernanda Ricaurte

  3. IBZ, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH-Zürich, CHN K 12.2, Universitätstrasse 16, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Luisa Fernanda Ricaurte

  4. Departamento de Engenharia Florestal, Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso, Campus Alta Floresta, Avenida Perimetal Rogério Silva S/N, Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso, Brazil

    Guilherme Augusto Borges

  5. Departamento de Engenharia Florestal, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Campus Cuiabá, Av. Fernando Correa da Costa, S/N, Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, 78060-900, Brazil

    Gustavo Manzon Nunes

  6. UNESCO Chair “River Culture,” Interdisciplinary Research Center for Cities, Territories, Environment and Society (CNRS UMR CITERES), Université François Rabelais, Parc Grandmont, 37200, Tours, France

    Karl Matthias Wantzen

Authors
  1. Auberto Siqueira
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  2. Luisa Fernanda Ricaurte
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  3. Guilherme Augusto Borges
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  4. Gustavo Manzon Nunes
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  5. Karl Matthias Wantzen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Auberto Siqueira.

Additional information

Editor: Marc J. Metzger.

Electronic supplementary material

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Fig. S1

Protection status of native vegetation remaining fragments by 2007 in northern Amazonia (TIFF 1111 kb)

Fig. S2

Protection status of native vegetation remaining fragments by 2007 in southern Amazonia (TIFF 1005 kb)

Fig. S3

Protection status of native vegetation remaining fragments by 2007 in Cerrado (TIFF 1417 kb)

Fig. S4

Protection of native vegetation remaining fragments by 2007 in Pantanal (TIFF 1118 kb)

Supplementary material 5 (DOCX 16 kb)

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Supplementary material 7 (DOCX 32 kb)

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Supplementary material 10 (DOCX 55 kb)

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Siqueira, A., Ricaurte, L.F., Borges, G.A. et al. The role of private rural properties for conserving native vegetation in Brazilian Southern Amazonia. Reg Environ Change 18, 21–32 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-015-0824-z

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