The assessment of climatic, environmental, and socioeconomic aspects of the Brazilian Cerrado

• Published in: Ecological processes Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 19
• Main Authors: Correia Filho, Washington Luiz Félix, de Oliveira-Júnior, José Francisco, Santiago, Dimas de Barros, Abdo, Hazem Ghassan, Almohamad, Hussein, Al Dughairi, Ahmed Abdullah, da Silva Junior, Carlos Antonio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.12.2023; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Active fire; Adequacy; Agribusiness; Agricultural expansion; Agricultural land; Agriculture; Autumn; cerrado; Components; Correlation analysis; cropland; data collection; Deforestation; Earth and Environmental Science; Economic development; Ecosystems; Environment; Environmental aspects; Environmental assessment; Evaluation; Evapotranspiration; Fires; Forest & brush fires; High altitude; human development; Human Development Index; indigenous species; Land cover; Land use; Land use and land cover; land use and land cover maps; Livestock; Precipitation; Principal components analysis; rain; Rainfall; Remote sensing; savannas; Shrublands; Social factors; Socioeconomic aspects; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomics; Spatial analysis; Spring; Spring (season); Statistical analysis; Statistical methods; Transition zone; variance; Vegetation; Brazil; Cerrado Biome; Active fire; Environment; Agribusiness; Land use and land cover; Human Development Index
• ISSN: 2192-1709; 2192-1709
• DOI: 10.1186/s13717-023-00433-0

Background The Cerrado is the most biodiverse savanna and maintains other biomes. Aware of its significance, this paper evaluated the Brazilian Cerrado’s climatic, environmental, and socioeconomic aspects using remote sensing data and spatial statistics (correlation analysis and principal components analysis—PCA). Following the measures of sample adequacy (MSA) and Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) tests, seventeen variables were evaluated. Results The MSA revealed that the dataset had a good quality (0.76), and nine variables were selected: elevation, evapotranspiration, active fires, Human Development Index (HDI), land use and land cover (LULC; shrubland and cropland/rainfed), rainfall (spring and autumn), and livestock. The correlation matrix indicated a positive (negative) association between HDI and autumn rainfall (HDI and active fires) with a value of 0.77 (− 0.55). The PCA results determined which three principal components (PC) were adequate for extracting spatial patterns, accounting for 68.02% of the total variance with respective values of 38.59%, 16.89%, and 12.5%. Due to economic development and agribusiness, Cerrado’s northern (central, western, and southern) areas had negative (positive) score HDI values, as shown in PC1. Climatic (rainfall—spring and fall) and environmental (cropland/rainfed and shrubland) aspects dominated the PC2, with negative scores in northern and western portions due to the transition zone between Amazon and Cerrado biomes caused by rainfall variability. On the other hand, environmental aspects (LULC-shrubland and elevation) influenced the PC3; areas with high altitudes (> 500 m) received a higher score. Conclusion Agricultural expansion substantially affected LULC, leading to deforestation-caused suppression of native vegetation.