Spatial pattern analysis of deforestation in the northeast of Minas Gerais State, Brazil.

Understanding the spatial pattern of a particular geographic phenomenon such as deforestation is a key issue to establish monitoring programs to prevent the depletion of natural resources. Thus, the goal of this study was to assess the spatial pattern of deforested areas in the Pardo and Jequitinhonha River basins using Ripley's K function. First, we mapped all deforested areas in these basins using Landsat multispectral imagery from 2007 to 2015.

Spatial distribution of wood volume in Brazilian savannas.

Here we model and describe the wood volume of Cerrado Sensu Stricto, a highly heterogeneous vegetation type in the Savanna biome, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, integrating forest inventory data with spatial-environmental variables, multivariate regression, and regression kriging. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the factors that affect the spatial distribution of the wood volume of this vegetation type as well as allowing better representation of the spatial heterogeneity of this biome. Wood volume estimates were obtained through regression models using different environmental variables as independent variables.