ASSESSING DEFORESTATION RELATED CARBON EMISSION IN THE BRAZILIAN SAVANNA BASED ON MODERATE RESOLUTION IMAGERY

The Brazilian Cerrado is the second largest biome in South America, comprising an area of approximately 2 million km(2) or 24% of the Brazilian territory. In spite of its important role in carbon fluxes and storage, this biome has been facing intensive, fast-pace, agro-pastoral land use, as the occurrence of favorable topography and soils of easy management enabled highly-mechanized, rainfed grain and cattle meat productions for exportation. This paper presents an overview of a methodological approach for assessing carbon emission caused by deforestation in the Brazilian Cerrado biome, based on multi-temporal and multi-thematic analysis. Preliminary results, based on the 250m Terra-MODIS normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images, suggest that about 45 million tons of carbon were emitted due to the 2008 - 2009 clearings in Cerrado biome.