Long-term assessment of oil palm expansion and landscape change in the eastern Brazilian Amazon

In the Brazilian Amazon, land use and land cover changes (LULC) are extremely heterogeneous, in both spatial and temporal terms. Understanding the long-term trajectory of changes in LULC, and the resulting impact on landscape structure, is essential for the development of adequate, environmentally sound land use policies. To this end, we characterized the spatiotemporal aspects of LULC changes, and their effects on the landscape, in an agricultural backdrop of oil palm cultivation, based on a multi-temporal analysis of the period between 1991 and 2013. We classified Landsat images and analyzed landscape changes in 2588.72 km(2) of the oil palm expansion zone (polo do dende), located between the municipalities of Moju, Acara, and Tailandia (called Moju region), northeastern Para, Brazil. We found that, during this period, 47.7% of the primary forest was converted for other uses, degraded forest increased by 17%, and oil palm plantation increased by 11%. Thirty percent of the primary forest was converted to oil palm plantation during the 22-year study period, however, between 2005 and 2013, primary forest conversion to oil palm increased by just 2%. In contrast, changes in landscape structure were related to the fragmentation of the forest cover, leading to an increasing isolation of forest patches and reduction in the area of forest remnants. These data offer a clear warning sign that for future expansion of palm oil plantations in the Para state we need to adopt strategies focused on landscape integrity, and develop initiatives towards the regulation of large areas of monoculture, helping guarantee the region's environmental sustainability.