Evaluation of the contribution of Environmental Protection Areas in the Cerrado to the protection of natural environment

Abstract

Environmental Protection Areas (EPA) represent about 65% of the entire protected areas for conservation unit in the Brazilian Cerrado. The conservation of native vegetation areas has been considered a great strategy to guarantee the provision of ecosystem services, such as climate maintenance. The carbon stock contained in natural environments is one of the ecosystem services directly affected by their conversion to anthropogenic environments. In this context, we sought to understand the role of EPA in the conservation of native vegetation areas and to estimate the carbon stock added by them. For this, we compare 16 EPA and 16 unprotected areas, using the MapBiomas classification, which establishes three types of vegetation: forest, savanna, and grassland. We evaluated whether there was a differentiated change in the proportion of vegetation cover between protected and non-protected areas from the creation of the EPA to 2020. Using the InVEST model, we estimated the carbon stock of each EPA at the initial moment of its creation and in 2020. EPA showed a similar pattern in relation to unprotected areas in Cerrado and, although small, showed a loss of carbon stock. This tells us that as a long-term climate change mitigation measure, they are probably not effective.