## 1 Introduction  
Intact forest ecosystems play a key role in increasing resilience to climate change, and conserving biodiversity [1; 2]. The Brazilian Legal Amazon, delimited according to Art. 2 of Complementary Law No. 124, of 3 January 2007 [3], has a total area of 5.02 M km\({}^{2}\), corresponding to 58.9% of the Brazilian territory [4]. This area is responsible for holding the Earth's greatest biodiversity and above ground biomass, also accounting for one of the largest sources of mineral and biological resources [5; 6; 7]. Among the ecosystem services provided is the removal of carbon through CO\({}_{2}\) from the atmosphere, via capture and storage by increase in gross primary production (GPP) [8; 9; 10]. A total forest sink of 2.4 \(\pm\) 0.4 Pg C year\({}^{-1}\) was estimated globally, and 262.1 Pg C of this was stocked in tropical America [11]. The GPP relates to carbon dioxide absorption during the photosynthesis process [12; 13; 14]. The analysis of anomalies in the GPP values determines the impact of changes in both carbon absorption and emissions [15]. It is possible and necessary to accurately estimate their temporal and spatial variations to understand several ecosystem functions in response to climate and land use and land cover changes [16; 17]. These processes play an important role in the carbon balance between the atmosphere and the biosphere [6; 18], as well as in the modifications in response to climate change [19; 20; 21]. These modifications are mainly related to forest loss, induced by deforestation, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, thus worsening global warming [22; 23; 24]. Indigenous lands (IL), areas destined for the indigenous population, and protected areas (PA), areas for environmental conservation, in the BLA accounted for 43% of the total land area and covered about half of the total forest area in the region [2]; they are important in conserving the standing forest, biodiversity, and in mitigating the climate in the Brazilian Legal Amazon, as they act as \"shields\" against deforestation [2; 25; 26]. However, forest conservation in IL/PA has been facing increasing threats from weak environmental laws and regulations, changes in government priorities and massive economic development [24; 27; 28]. In the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA), 75% of deforestation has occurred in large swathes along highways, most of them close to ILs and Pas, inducing forest losses due to different land use and land cover changes [28; 29]. An example is the paving of the Belem-Brasilia (BR-010) and Cuiaba-Porto Velho (BR-364) highways that originated the so-called \"arc of deforestation\" [30; 31]. Increased carbon emissions, land use and land cover changes, and anthropogenic pressure are the main drivers in the degradation of tropical forests, such as the Amazon, which have led to severe losses of carbon sinks [22; 32; 33]. Land use and land cover changes caused by anthropogenic activities have substantially altered carbon cycling, contributing to the increase in atmospheric CO\({}_{2}\) concentration (XCO\({}_{2}\)), among other greenhouse gases, which is the main cause of global warming and climate change [34]. Land use change in tropical climates accounted for 1.1 \(\pm\) 0.7 Pg C of terrestrial carbon emissions between 2000-2007 [11]. The historical assessment of land use and land cover changes is important for the management of natural resources and the development of sustainable policies, as it gives insights into the interaction between the environment and humans in a given region, thus preventing further environmental degradation in several aspects [35; 36; 37]. Remote sensing techniques are often used to better understand land use and land cover changes, as they reduce the cost and time necessary to detect environmental degradation [38; 39; 40] and climate and carbon fluxes, as extensively covered in the recent literature [18; 20; 21; 34; 41; 42; 43].