Fire as a Catalyst for Sugarcane Expansion: Data and Code Repository — São Paulo, Brazil, 1990–2017

Data, code, and results for the manuscript <em>Fire as a Catalyst for Sugarcane Expansion: Burn Scars Predict Direct Conversion of Natural Vegetation in São Paulo, Brazil</em> (submitted to Land Use Policy, Elsevier).</p><p>This repository provides: (1) 56 processed CSV files (28 per analysis type) with municipality-year observations for trajectory areas and 2×2 contingency-table cells from MapBiomas Collection 9 (LULC) and MapBiomas Fire Collection 3 (burned coverage), covering 645 municipalities in São Paulo state across base years 1990–2017; (2) two Google Earth Engine (GEE) JavaScript scripts for spatial processing; (3) two Python scripts for statistical analysis; and (4) formatted Excel result workbooks with all statistical test outputs.</p><p>Key finding: municipalities with antecedent burn scars on natural vegetation converted 7.8 times more area to sugarcane (40.7 ha vs 6.0 ha; Mann-Whitney p &lt; 0.0001), with a monotonic dose-response gradient across five conversion-intensity quintiles (Kruskal-Wallis H = 2305.87, p &lt; 0.0001). State-level aggregated relative risk rose consistently above 1 from 2011 onward, reaching 4.05 in 2017.