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The Amazon rainforest provides ecosystem services to 33 million people, including 1.5 million Indigenous people from 385 different groups, living within the biome boundary. The goals of this project were to understand how forest degradation, deforestation, and road building affect the ecosystem services provided by the hydrologic cycle in the Southwestern Amazon and to develop data and tools to improve sustainable development in the region.
On this NASA-SERVIR funded project, our team focused on Ucayali, Peru and Acre, Brazil to characterize changes in forest cover using remotely-sensed data and fieldwork, and attribute these changes in forest cover to localized changes in evapotranspiration (ET), precipitation and temperature. The effect-radius of these changes in forest cover (how far away these changes are felt) were determined, and maps generated that highlight areas that have undergone changes in microclimatology and land-use. Our project emphasized capacity building with local indigenous and non-indigenous groups, as well as colleagues with at CIAT and SERVIR Amazonia-Hub partner institutions such as ACCA-MAAP. |
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