Avaliação da expansão do cultivo da cana-de-açúcar no bioma cerrado por meio de modelagem dinâmica da paisagem

Abstract

Due to the increasing demand for alternative sources of energy, renewable and able to minimize the emission of green-house gases, the ethanol production is growing fast in Brazil, at the expense of large extensions of land being rapidly occupied by sugarcane, especially in the Cerrado biome. On the other hand, such expansion, without proper planning, will certainly threaten the biodiversity, the water resources and other Cerrado environmental services. Within this con-text, in this work, focused on a dynamic modeling approach, which accounts for both the current trends, as well as the availability of suitable land, we propose a thorough understanding on how the sugarcane front may move across time and space. Our results show that the sugarcane area my increase fi vefold up to 2035, and that, without proper territorial ordainment, approximately 45% of the current agricultural area may be replaced by sugarcane, inducing a dangerous monoculture over wide areas, in addition to severe impacts to many of the Cerrado watersheds.