When Drought Matters: Changes Within and Outside Protected Areas from the Pantanal Ecoregion

Protected areas (PA) are being stifled by human land uses, jeopardizing their integrity and ecosystem services. Therefore, we searched for human land use within 19 PAs of the Pantanal ecoregion. We assessed changes in land cover from protected areas’ creation year up to 2021. In addition, we established a 10 km buffer from each PA limit to compare trends in the landscape inside and outside PAs. Our results indicated the presence of pasture fields in eight PAs analyzed. We also detected a decrease in open water areas and a slight variation in native vegetation over the years. There was an increase in grassland and savanna areas, while forest, wetland, and pasture fields did not change over the years. Of all 19 buffer zones, 15 had human land uses. In addition to an increase in the human land use area, buffer zones showed an increase in grassland cover and a decrease in the open water cover. Terrestrial environments within most Pantanal PAs still stand to human interventions. Still, the human land use in reserves where it is not allowed indicates management issues and low law enforcement. Unfortunately, aquatic environments’ protection is more challenging, depending on actions at lowlands and surrounding plateaus that harbor the headwaters. There is a clear need to integrate warming and drying impacts in the protected areas management plans. Since we have no control over large-scale climate, we must focus more on mitigating regional climate from a land use perspective.