For the construction of the Deforestation Monitoring System, publicly available databases on deforestation authorizations and enforcement actions such as fines and embargoes are used. Data in active transparency, i.e., information disclosed by the public agency, regardless of request, usually via the internet, are consumed.
Spatial Data Analysis
For the construction of the Deforestation Monitoring System, publicly available databases on deforestation authorizations and enforcement actions such as fines and embargoes are used. Data in active transparency, i.e., information disclosed by the public agency, regardless of request, usually via the internet, are consumed.
Initially, a survey was conducted on the websites of federal and state environmental agencies to identify which of them provided updated and geospatially formatted public information on deforestation authorizations and actions taken to combat illegal deforestation (e.g., fines and embargoes).
Information from the federal government and states is spatially intersected with deforestation alerts validated and published by MapBiomas Alerta (http://alerta.mapbiomas.org/). The Monitoring of Enforcement will be periodically updated by accessing public databases and deforestation alerts to identify new data and redo the analyses and descriptive statistics.
The databases are standardized in the coordinate system with Albers Equivalent Conic projection and Sirgas 2000 datum. Data processing and spatial analysis are performed using ArcGIS 10.8.1 software. After standardizing the coordinate systems, the databases' geometries are checked and repaired. This step aims to rid the database of topological inconsistencies, empty geometries, and other errors that compromise the processing of subsequent steps.
Subsequently, the Identity tool is used to intersect deforestation alerts with valid deforestation authorizations for the analysis period. This tool calculates the geometric intersection between the databases so that alert polygons that overlap authorized areas carry authorization-related information in their database. When the state-provided database was composed of points, a sixty-meter radius buffer was applied to avoid displacement problems concerning the collection location of geographic coordinates. In this case, the Spatial Join tool is adopted, allowing the linkage of point-format database information with deforestation alerts.
From the data intersections, it is possible to identify in the deforestation alert database which alerts overlap with authorizations and those without authorizations, which characterize as an indication of illegality.
For the analysis of enforcement actions that impact deforestation alerts, only fines or embargoes issued from 01/01/2018 onwards were selected, so that the date was closer to the validated deforestation and published by MapBiomas Alerta (which has data from 2019 onwards). The Identity tool is also used to intersect alerts with spatial information from Ibama and state databases when the database consists of polygons. Similarly, when the database consists of points, a sixty-meter radius buffer is applied to correct displacement associated with the point's location, and the Spatial Join. tool is adopted.
For states that provided information in spreadsheets, spatialization of information was performed based on available geographic coordinates.
All original databases from states and the federal government are supplemented with biome and municipality information from the 2019 IBGE database.
The download dates of both the deforestation alert platform (MapBiomas Alerta) and federal government and state agency information are described on the Enforcement Monitoring page at the end of the presentation of results for each federative unit.
Access the full Methodological Note here