Cropland expansion, intensification, and reduction in Mato Grosso state, Brazil, between the crop years 2000/01 to 2017/18

Growing populations require increased food production through increasing yields and expanding land use. Thus, agricultural production has a dialectical relationship with natural resource conservation. South America has been the recent site of both intensification and areal expansion of crop production. The presented study investigates the dynamics of land use and land cover (LULC) in Mato Grosso state at two-year intervals for an 18-year period consisting of the 2000/01 and 2017/18 crop years. We used a stratified sampling approach and visual interpretation of satellite image time series data to obtain estimates of LULC extent and dynamics, including area of cropland expansion, intensification, and reduction. Cropland dynamics exhibited an overall increase in both extent and intensification. The cropland use area in Mato Grosso increased from 38,324 km2 (±5618 km2) in 2000/01 to 97,394 km2 (±9938 km2) in 2017/2018. For the Cerrado tropical woodland biome portion of Mato Grosso, the expansion of cropland areas was related to soy and corn prices. For the humid tropical forest biome of Amazonia, soy production and deforestation were found to not be directly correlated. The intensification in Mato Grosso was increased from 8142 km2 (±1.39%) in the period from 2008/09 to 2010/11, to 30,487 km2 (±2.56%) in the period from 2010/11 to 2012/13. Overall dynamics reflect public and private conservation policies, soy market, climate and technology factors that spur or inhibit increased production of commodity crops. The end result reflects Brazil's increasing role as a global commodity crop producer.