required for 
duced at the 
I'M 30-meter 
present less 
mage texture 
reference or 
on. 
gion 
wo different 
"quebradáo" 
luce clearing 
cut areas can 
ods of time, 
however, can 
und evidence 
rest just two 
je cleared to 
, maintaining 
uch areas is 
r use (Uhl et 
ithin shorter 
under these 
e identified, 
particularly if there are satellite data available for the initial 
regeneration stages. Areas abandoned shortly after clearing can 
also be identified by multitemporal analysis. Differentiation of 
these practices can help to better understand the impacts of 
deforestation and, particularly, that of land use dynamics on the 
carbon cycle. 
Characterization of Land Use Dynamics 
Preliminary results of the processing of 1990 and the 1994 scenes 
show that secondary vegetation represents an important fraction 
of the total deforested area. Occurrence of abandonment was 
checked in part of the area during a field campaign in September 
1995. Image classification results and the field campaign also 
confirmed that part of the abandoned areas is re-cleared and part 
continues in the abandonment state, leading to development of 
older stages of secondary vegetation. 
These preliminary results are very likely to be the upper limits of 
the fraction of the abandonment. They do not differentiate 
between perennial cultures (particularly cacao and rubber) and 
abandonment, that the authors found in some areas. A more 
detailed survey of the region is needed and the potential of using 
TM data for discrimination of these categories has to be 
thoroughly evaluated to improve the classification results and to 
produce reliable figures of the fractions of land in use and 
abandonment. 
One interesting characteristic observed in this study is that part 
of the area classified as abandoned in 1990 was classified as 
forest in 1994. This occurred partly because of segmentation and 
classification errors, but, also, because of the difficulties in 
discriminating between forest and older stages of secondary 
vegetation. 
The approach described in this paper is being used by INPE 
researchers to study land cover/land use dynamics in Rondónia 
and in other regions of the Brazilian Amazon. The aims of these 
studies are to determine how deforestation and abandonment 
evolved in the regions over the last 10-20 years, and to evaluate 
some of the impacts of human occupation in the Amazon. The 
approach described in this paper has proven to be useful for these 
studies, and can contribute to improve the assessment of the 
causes and effects of deforestation in the Amazon. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Support for this work was provided 
by FAPESP (project number 95/2432-5) and CNPq (project 
numbers RHAE 610206/94-0). Authors also acknowledge the 
support of Rondónia State Secretary for Environmental 
Development (SEDAM) and, particularly, Eraldo Matricardi, of 
Silvana Amaral (INPE). 
REFERENCES 
ALVES, D.S., MEiRA FiLgo, L.G., D'ALGE, J.C.L., MELLO, E.K., 
MOREIRA, J.C., DE MEDEIROS, J.S., 1992, The Amazonia 
Information System. ISPRS Archives, Commission VI, 259-266 
17 
ALVES, D.S. & SkoLE, D.L.,1996, Characterizing Land Cover 
Dynamics Using Multitemporal Imagery. International Journal of 
Remote Sensing, in press 
ALVES, D.S., MOREmRA, J.C, Kann, E.M., SOARES, J.V., 
FERNANDEZ. O., ALMEIDA, S., ORTIZ, J.D., & AMARAL, S., 1996. 
Mapeamento do Uso da Terra em Rondónia Utilizando Técnicas 
de Segmentagáo e Classificacdo de Imagens TM, Proc., VII Braz. 
Symp. on Remote Sensing, Salvador, April 1996, in press 
BINS, L.S., Fonseca, L.M.G., ERTHAL, GJ. & I, F., 1996. 
Satellite Image Segmentation: a region growing approach. Proc., 
VIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Salvador, 
Bahia, April 1996, in press 
BROWN, S., & Luco, A., 1990, Tropical Secondary Forests. 
Journal of Tropical Ecology, 6, 1-32 
CAMARA, G, DE Souza, R.C.M., Freitas, UM, & CASANOVA, 
M.A., 1992. SPRING: Processamento de Imagens e¢ de Dados 
Georeferenciados. SIBGRAPI 92, Proc., Aguas de Lindöia, 
Novembro 1992, 233-242 
FIBGE (Fundacäo Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica), 
1992. Manual Técnico da Vegetacäo Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: 
Fundaçäo Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) 
FIBGE (idem), 1994. Anuário Estatístico do Brasil 1994 (Rio de 
Janeiro: Fundagáo Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) 
INPE (INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE PESQUISAS EsPACIAIS), 1992. 
Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon. Separata (Sáo José dos 
Campos: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais) 
LISBOA, P.L.B., 1989. Estudo florístico da vegetagáo arbórea de 
uma floresta secundária, em Rondónia. Boletim Museu Paraense 
Emilio Goeldi, série Botánica, 5(2), 145-162 
Lucas, R.M., M. HONZAK, G.M. Foopy, P.J. CURRAN, & C. 
CORVES, 1993, Characterizing tropical secondary forests using 
multi-temporal Landsat sensor imagery. International Journal of 
Remote Sensing, 14, 3061-3067 
ScHIMEL, D., ENTING, LG., HEIMANN, M., WiGLEY, T.M.L., 
RAYNAUD, D., ALvES, D., & SIEGENTHALER, U., 1995, CO» and 
The Carbon Cycle. In: Climate Change 1994, Radiative Forcing 
of Climate Change and An Evaluation of the IPCC 1S92 
Emission Scenarios, edited by J.T. Houghton, L.G. Meira Filho, 
J. Bruce, Hoesung Lee, B.A. Callender, E. Haites, N. Harris and 
K. Maskell (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press) 35-71 
SKOLE, D.L. AND TUCKER, C.J., 1993, Tropical Deforestation and 
Habitat Fragmentation in the Amazon: Satellite Data from 1978 
to 1988. Science, 260, 1905-1910 
UHL, C., BUSCHBACHER, R., & SERRAO, E.A.S., 1988. Abandoned 
pastures in eastern Amazonia. I. Patterns of plant succession. 
Journal of Ecology, 76, 663-681 
TARDIN, A.T., LEE, D.C.L., SANTOS, R.J.R., Assis, O.R., 
BARBOSA, M.P.S., MOREIRA, M.L., PEREIRA, M.T., SiLVA, D., 
SANTOS FiLHO, C.P., 1980, Subprojeto desmatamento: convénio 
IBDF/CNPq - INPE. Relatório técnico INPE-1649-RPE/103 (Sáo 
José dos Campos: Instituto de Pesquisas Espaciais) 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B7. Vienna 1996