Inhibition of Amazon Deforestation and Fire by Parks and Indigenous Lands

Conservation scientists generally agree that many types of protected areas will be needed to protect tropical forests. But little is known of the comparative performance of inhabited and uninhabited reserves in slowing the most extreme form of forest disturbance: conversion to agriculture. We used satellite-based maps of land cover and fire occurrence in the Brazilian Amazon to compare the performance of large (> 10,000 ha) uninhabited (parks) and inhabited (indigenous lands, extractive reserves, and national forests) reserves. Reserves significantly reduced both deforestation and fire. Deforestation was 1.7 (extractive reserves) to 20 (parks) times higher along the outside versus the inside of the reserve…

• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• GA
  Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
• CD
  Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior