Biases and limitations of Global Forest Change and author-generated land cover maps in detecting deforestation in the Amazon

作者：Eva Kinnebrew, José I. Ochoa-Brito, Matthew French, Megan Mills‐Novoa, Elizabeth Shoffner, Katherine Siegel · 发表于：PLoS ONE · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0268970 · 被引用次数：31 · 研究领域：Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management、African Botany and Ecology Studies、Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

Studying land use change in protected areas (PAs) located in tropical forests is a major conservation priority due to high conservation value (e.g., species richness and carbon storage) here, coupled with generally high deforestation rates. Land use change researchers use a variety of land cover products to track deforestation trends, including maps they produce themselves and readily available products, such as the Global Forest Change (GFC) dataset. However, all land cover maps should be critically assessed for limitations and biases to accurately communicate and interpret results. In this study, we assess deforestation in PA complexes located in agricultural frontiers in the Amazon Basin. We studied three specific sites: Amboró and Carrasco National Parks in Bolivia, Jamanxim National Forest in Brazil, and Tambopata National Reserve and Bahuaja-Sonene National Park in Peru. Within and in 20km buffer areas around each complex, we generated land cover maps using composites of Landsat imagery and supervised classification, and compared deforestation trends to data from the GFC dataset. We then performed a dissimilarity analysis to explore the discrepancies between the two remote sensing products. Both the GFC and our supervised classification showed that deforestation rates were higher in the 20km buffer than inside the PAs and that Jamanxim National Forest had the highest deforestation rate of the PAs we studied. However, GFC maps showed consistently higher rates of deforest...