Mudanças do clima, do uso e cobertura das terras na região do MATOPIBA.

Abstract

The MATOPIBA region, currently known as the new agricultural frontier, has received major investments in the agribusiness sector in recent decades. In order to further expand agricultural production, much of its soil cover has undergone modifications through the removal of native vegetation to introduce cultivars, mainly soybeans. However, the loss of biodiversity in the Cerrado biome, which covers a large part of the area, has been noticeable in recent years, making it increasingly necessary to monitor changes in surface cover. Based on this, this work aims to map and analyze changes in the land use and occupation process, as a basis for understanding the cause and effect dynamics of the expansion of agribusiness on environmental quality and agricultural production in the MATOPIBA region. To this end, diagnoses of the evolution of agribusiness in the study region were carried out using MapBioma data and a survey of the level of forest alteration using the K-means method, Pettitt homogeneity tests, Mann-Kendall and Sen's trend methods for a better understanding of the dynamics of the variables' trends. Finally, the environmental indicators of Gross Primary Productivity (GPP), Evapotranspiration (ET), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and Water Use Efficiency (WUE) were estimated and analyzed to assess the changes and behavior of plant biodiversity. The results showed that there was a loss of forest area, equivalent to 11 Mha, and a significant growth in the agricultural area over the 35 years of study, indicating a tendency for the amount of altered area for agricultural use to exceed the amount of natural vegetation area. It also demonstrated the effectiveness of the statistical methods used in the microregions and in determining the existence of trends, which occurred in all groups throughout the series, with the period that marked the most significant change occurring in 2001 in most cases, marking the boost in soybean production in the region. The environmental indicators used show that despite the marked evapotranspiration and changes in rainfall behavior, GPP, EVI and WUE did not undergo sudden changes in data density over the last 20 years, despite the very low GPP values observed in 2016.