Assessing Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Direct Influence Zone of the Braço Norte Hydropower Complex, Brazilian Amazonia

Over the decades, hydropower complexes have been built in several hydrographic basins of Brazil including the Amazon region. Therefore, it is important to understand the effects of these constructions on the environment and local communities. This work presents a land use and land cover change temporal analysis considering a 33-year period (1985–2018) in the direct influence zone of the Braco Norte Hydropower Complex, Brazilian Amazonia, using the Collection 4.1 level 3 of the freely available MapBiomas dataset. Additionally, we have assessed the Brazilian Amazon large-scale deforestation process acting as a land use and land cover change driver in the study area. Our findings show that the most impacted land cover was forest formation (from 414 km2 to 287 km2, a reduction of 69%), which primarily shifted into pasturelands (increase of 664%, from 40 km2 to 299 km2). The construction of the hydropower complex also triggered indirect impacts such as the presence of urban areas in 2018 and the consequent increased local demand for crops. Together with the ongoing large-scale Amazonian deforestation process, the construction of the complex has intensified changes in the study area as 56.42% of the pixels were changed between 1985 and 2018. This indicates the importance of accurate economic and environmental impact studies for assessing social and environmental consequences of future construction in this unique region. Our results reveal the need for adopting special policies to minimize the impact of these constructions, for example, the creation of Protected Areas and the definition of locally-adjusted parameters for the ecological-economic zoning considering environmental and social circumstances derived from the local actors that depend on the natural environment to subsist such as indigenous peoples, riverine population, and artisanal fishermen.