Land use and land cover dynamics in a sustainable development project in the Transamazon highway region, Pará state, Brazil

The Transamazon highway region in the state of Pará is critical for Amazon deforestation due to socioeconomic transformations it has undergone. This work analyzes spatial and temporal changes in land use and its impacts on land cover in the Virola-Jatobá Sustainable Development Project (PDS) in Anapu-Pará, from 1984 to 2015. The study was mainly conducted through processing and analyzing Landsat scenes using the Spring platform. Very modest rates of deforestation were registered in the initial years analyzed. More substantial increments were reached seven years after the formation of the PDS, but nevertheless still at a low level. Consequently, forest is the predominant land cover in the PDS, followed by pasture, because agricultural areas are modest. In general, forested land presented high stability rates. Among other land use classes, pastures also presented significant stability, although the class weedy pasture showed some instability.