MapBiomas Collection 5 of the annual maps of the coverage and land use in Brazil is now available. There are not only improvements in relation to previous versions but also the inclusion of 2019 in the historical series that dates back to 1985. The launch took place at the “5th Annual Seminar of MapBiomas: Revealing land use in Brazil with science and transparency,” on August 28, 2020, organized by the general coordinator of the initiative, Tasso Azevedo. During the online event, the results were presented, such as the 35 years of the annual maps of the coverage and land use in Brazil on a 30-meter scale and improvements in the accuracy of the biomes and the new classes of agriculture, using the new limit of the biomes on a scale of 1:250,000 of the IBGE – and also some innovations in the beta versions.
“We have been working with the infrastructure data and providing more detail. We also worked with two themes to explain the map: we wanted to understand where are the areas of irrigated agriculture are and also identify the grasslands. Perhaps one of the most important things in Brazil is to understand what happens with the grasslands, which represent 20% of the national territory and are the main use of land in Brazil. Understanding this is fundamental to any land use strategy,” explained Tasso.
The work developed by MapBiomas, as emphasized by Gilberto Câmara at the launch, the secretariat director of the Group on Earth Observations in Geneva, is the largest worldwide endeavor in the sector, both in terms of its scope, as well as in historical terms, the size of the area and of the team. More than this, reinforced Ana Toni, the executive director of iCS, it is fundamental in the understanding and study of the history of the change in land use in Brazil, using the memory as a projection tool for the future that we want, including public policies. “Science and transparency are an intangible heritage of democracy and MapBiomas represents the realization of this heritage for Brazilian democracy,” she said.
Watch the entire seminar here , study and learn about the data from Collection 5 on the website and see below some of the infographics by biomes:
