Mapping land use of tropical regions from space.

Souza Jr., C. 2006. Mapping land use of tropical regions from space. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 103 (39): 1461-1462.

Resume

This is a commentary on Morton et al article “Cropland expansion changes deforestation dynamics in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Besides the comments, it presents a forest monitoring program that integrates de approach developed by Morton et al with other techniques and tools already developed. It also indicates future research activities and land-use policy applications that will be facilitated by the remote-sensing techniques developed by Morton et al : a) improving carbon flux models; b) licensing, command control, and law enforcement; c) agribusiness market regulation, and d) modeling deforestation dynamics.