Analysis between fire hotspot occurrences and water deficit in areas dedicated to soybean cultivation and pasturelands in Mato Grosso in 2016, 2020, and 2024
Amazon, remote sensing, public policies.
Soybean and beef production make Mato Grosso a national agricultural and livestock powerhouse. However, there is an environmental cost. One of them is fire, which, alongside increasingly frequent climate change and extreme events, has become a driver of disasters. In this context, this study aimed to analyze the relationship between fire hotspot occurrences and water deficit in areas dedicated to soybean cultivation and pasturelands in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Soybean crop mapping was performed using the Perpendicular Crop Enhancement Index (PCEI) vegetation index applied to images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. Pasturelands were mapped using the Random Forest classifier on images from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensor. Fire hotspot data were collected in shapefile format from the FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System) platform, while precipitation and SPI data were obtained from the Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) database. The analysis of 80,923 hotspots indicated that the Amazon was the biome most affected by fire under both land use types. Among the evaluated years, 2020 stood out with the highest proportion of occurrences in both sectors. Finally, the application of Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) of the Negative Binomial Hurdle class, fitted to the study region, revealed that soybean crop areas exhibit greater vulnerability to fire than pasturelands.