Vegetation resilience prognosis: A past and future approach from hydrometeorological and remote sensing data for eight government regions of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The state of Rio de Janeiro has a diverse geography that is mainly composed of Atlantic Forest and mangrove formations. In recent decades, the state has undergone several changes in natural vegetation owing to human action, promoting the emergence of degraded areas that are more susceptible to the effects of climate change, which is proving to be a threat to human health and safety. Using 19 years of data from meteorological variables and remote sensing (2001–2020), the objective was to evaluate the dynamics of vegetation, and to understand the impacts of the climate and its previous and future trends (2021–2040) for the eight regions of government in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Our results identified the Serrana, Norte Fluminense, and Noroeste Fluminense regions as the most susceptible to vegetation degradation and increases in fires particularly during the dry period, which show a strong negative correlation between soil moisture and more intense El Niño events. The results simulated by the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model warn of a reduction in rainfall and soil moisture mainly in the Northwestern Fluminense region. Based on these results, public policies should be implemented to mitigate the effects of anthropic actions in these regions, and prevent environmental degradation from becoming irreversible in the future.