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Forest amount affects soybean productivity in Brazilian agricultural frontier
  • +4
  • Ludmila Rattis,
  • Paulo Brando,
  • Eduardo Marques,
  • Nathane Queiroz,
  • Divino Silvério,
  • Marcia Macedo,
  • Michael Coe
Ludmila Rattis
Woods Hole Research Center

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Paulo Brando
Woods Hole Research Center
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Eduardo Marques
Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso
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Nathane Queiroz
Universidade Federal de Goias
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Divino Silvério
Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso
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Marcia Macedo
Woods Hole Research Center
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Michael Coe
Woods Hole Research Center
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Abstract

Over the past three decades, large tracts of tropical forests have been converted to crop and pasturelands across southern Amazonia, largely to meet the increasing worldwide demand for protein. As the world’s population continue to grow and consume more protein per capita, forest conversion to grow more crops could be a potential solution to meet such demand. However, widespread deforestation is expected to negatively affect crop productivity via multiple pathways (e.g., thermal regulation, rainfall, local moisture, pest control, among others). To quantify how deforestation affects crop productivity, we modeled the relationship between forest amount and enhanced vegetation index (EVI—a proxy for crop productivity) during the soybean planting season across southern Amazonia. Our hypothesis that forest amount causes increased crop productivity received strong support. We found that the maximum MODIS-based EVI in soybean fields increased as a function of forest amount across three spatial-scales, 0.5 km, 1 km, 2 km, 5 km, 10 km, 15 km and 20 km. However, the strength of this relationship varied across years and with precipitation, but only at the local scale (e.g., 500 meters and 1 km radius). Our results highlight the importance of considering forests to design sustainable landscapes.