| dc.description.abstract | Forests act as a reservoir of biodiversity, shelter to wildlife, carbon sinks, and mitigates climate change. Despite their importance, they have been threatened by human activities, which is the main driver of deforestation. The objectives of this study are the assessment and analysis of deforestation in the Paraguayan Chaco, South America, by means of satellite image classification and analysis through the cloud-based Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform.
Landsat images from the years of 2013 and 2017 were classified by a pixel-based supervised Random Forest Classifier. The classification results from different land-cover in the study area were then use to assess the deforestation, which expose a forest cover loss, in 2013 the forest cover was 172,862 km2 and 163,875.5 km2 in 2017; this revealed a cover loss of 8,986.3 km2 in 4 years. Furthermore, the classification results obtained in GEE platform were validated with validation points, the classification overall accuracy obtained was 0.86 for 2013 and 0.87 for 2017. The results indicate that GEE perform a rapid image processing and it is an effective reliable platform for deforestation assessment within the Chaco area.
The results shown that the deforestation process leaves geometry rectangular features in the land surface and they are easily visualized, this suggests that there is a large scale clearing and heavy machinery is use. The main driver of deforestation in the Chaco is cattle ranching, and the results of this study indicate that the deforestation in continue advancing. During the years of study, Paraguay increase the amount of meat exportation, situating the country within the top 10 major countries worldwide exporter of meat, and this coincide with the increase of deforestation in the Chaco, this problem is likely to continue, because Paraguay set a country goal of reaching more cattle heads by 2020.
Moreover, the results revealed that the deforestation process was spread within and in the buffer zones of the national forest protected areas, this suggest that there is lack of compliance with law were it stated that the protected areas are forbidden to use for economic purposes. Indigenous communities were also affected by the deforestation in the study period, threatening their home land and heritage.
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