Revealing indigenous territorial islanding in an agricultural frontier through land-use trajectories and multivariate analysis

The expansion of agricultural frontiers has driven major land-use changes in tropical regions, especially where Indigenous Territories coexist with rapidly transforming landscapes. This study analyzes land-use trajectories within and around the Pimentel Barbosa Indigenous Territory (PBIT), in northeast Mato Grosso, Brazil, from 1985 to 2024, using MapBiomas data. A multivariate approach combining Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and K-means clustering identified dominant patterns and three temporal regimes: a basal phase (1985–1995) dominated by natural vegetation, a transitional phase (1996–2012) marked by pasture expansion, and a consolidation phase (2013–2024) characterized by large-scale land use. While both the PBIT and its surrounding buffer follow these regimes, their trajectories diverge. The buffer shifts toward agro-industrial dominance, whereas the PBIT remains stable. These findings support territorial islanding as a framework linking land-use dynamics to governance systems, highlighting Indigenous governance as key to sustaining ecological stability and biodiversity conservation.