Monitoring the effects of fire on phenology and community structure of campos rupestres and cerrado vegetation through remote sensing

The Brazilian Cerrado is one of the largest centers of biodiversity in South America. Fire is a natural disturbance that determines its physiognomy and its structure of vegetation, and influences its diversity. Current climate change is expected to increase the global temperature and in consequence increase the risk of fire, as well as its intensity and frequency. Further, the current anthropogenic pressure has also led to an increase in fires currently occurring annually or biannually burning both the herbaceous layer and part of the woody layer. This complex vegetation has thus faced dramatic changes in land use, and is threatened by human activities and climate change. Human induced fire is one of the most significant threats to the Cerrado, and studies about fire and its impact on plants in this ecosystem are very important to understand plant dynamics and predict the trajectory of plant communities after this disturbance.

This research project has as its main the characterization of the effects of fire occurrence and fire frequency on Cerrado and campos rupestres physiognomies in the Parque Nacional da Serra do Cipó (MG), and Área de Proteção Ambiental Morro da Pedreira (MG), combining remote sensing methods and in situ analysis of plant diversity and structure. This study is based on an extensive series of remote sensing data, freely available. Time series of Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM and Landsat 8 OLI sensors were used to recosntruct the fire history for this area. Images from MODIS sensors also are used to study plant dynamics, by monitoring the rate of recovery of vegetation after fire. The phenological patterns are derived from the time series of EVI data using the TIMESAT algorithm, which was developed specifically to characterize phenological trends from remote sensing imagery.